Eastern Conference Finals Preview: Capitals-Lightning

[ PHOTO: THE WASHINGTON POST ]

May 8, 2018

Roger Mooney, Tampa Bay Times

It was fitting the Capitals, tormented for so long by the Penguins, were the team to put an end to the Penguins' Stanley Cup reign.

Their reward: A date with the top-seeded Lightning in the Eastern Conference final.

The best-of-seven series will be the third postseason meeting between the two teams. The Lightning won both, taking the 2003 Eastern Conference quarterfinal in six games and the 2011 conference semifinal in four.

History, however, means little to the Caps, who snapped a streak of seven-straight postseason series losses to the Penguins that dated back to the 1995 conference quarterfinal. Not this year, anyway.

The Caps advance to their third conference finals. They beat the Sabres in six in 1998 before being swept by the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals. In 1990, the Caps were swept by the Bruins in the ECF.

The Caps reached this round after beating the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins on Monday in Pittsburgh 2-1 on an overtime goal by Evgeny Kuznetsov.

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