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.
