One of which isn’t Atlanta.

The story of the Atlanta Thrashers really is pretty much the same with that of the Atlanta Flames: a long-odds experiment carried off for about a decade before largely vast vistas of rink emptiness. “Many nights the Thrashers played in front of great wastelands of empty chairs at futuristic Philips Arena, located downtown beside CNN headquarters and the Centennial Olympic Plaza,” the Canadian Press noted yesterday.

Although with the Thrash you ought to acknowledge that in the persons of Ilya Kovalchuk and Dany Heatley and Marian Hossa there were top-flight superstars wearing the team sweater, in their prime . . . and still it didn’t matter. There are of course superb hockey fans in Atlanta. There just aren’t enough of them.

Big league hockey has now failed twice in Atlanta. It should be a cold day in August there before it’s located there again. The Atlanta Spirit are the boogeymen of the moment in that town, but in time the Atlanta Journal Constitution will reflect on the failure with greater sobriety and perspective. Or maybe not. More importantly, we need our commissioner to reflect thusly.

Ultimately, he’s the figure to blame for hockey going up in flames in Atlanta. Hockey never belonged in Atlanta. You can’t quite imagine eight or ten buses filled with Atlanta hockey fans driving up 95 to take in a Saturday night Islanders game next season, can you?

Did you behold Bettman’s constipation-like countenance yesterday in Manitoba, at the presser confirming the worst-kept secret in the history of the NHL? If it wasn’t a look of constipation, it surely was one of ‘My eldest daughter just texted me from a tattoo parlor in Vegas, where she’s apparently eloping with a roadie for a gangster rap band.’

In his nearly 20-year tenure as NHL commissioner, yesterday in Manitoba won’t rank among the highlight moments for Gary Bettman.

Nor should it.

Hours before the start of the Stanley Cup finals the commissioner was out in the Canadian prairie, explaining (sort of) how it was that a top 10 U.S. market had rejected his marketing experiment. Yesterday in Manitoba was a seminal moment for the NHL, and it ought to have been one for the league’s owners and their unflinching conviction in the branding wisdom of their commish. It was Gary Bettman, the NBA marketing genius, who sold them on this notion that hockey can pretty much be plopped down anywhere in the U.S. and succeed just fine. Today we know with certainty that it cannot.

I’m very happy this summer for the hockey-loving people of Winnipeg, but some core questions emerge from news like yesterday’s, and they ought to be grappled with by the owners promptly. Foremost among them:

• Is NHL hockey a 30-market enterprise? And if it is, should a glut of franchises be located well south of the Mason Dixon Line?

• Also: Irrespective of lease agreements, how much arena emptiness, over successive years, is too much emptiness?

• Lastly (for the moment): If there is to be additional, dramatic market correction, and associated realignment, is Gary Bettman the guy we want carrying it off?

There was, too, a conspicuously ominous backdrop to yesterday’s news, and it too offers another referendum front for this commissioner. For most sensible people, there is an inevitability of failure to be found as well in the Arizona desert for NHL hockey. The Coyotes put a few more fannies in their seats than the Thrashers did (I think), but their rink is stupidly situated, virtually impossible to access by car from Phoenix in rush hour. Kinda like old Capital Centre was. And like Atlanta, there is no root infrastructure buttressing the big league club, no flowering youth and high school hockey scene driving hockey parents and hockey playing kids to the games. There is with the Phoenix Coyotes the fairly broadly held belief that this spring they stayed their ultimate execution by merely a year, that where we were with the Thrashers the past few weeks is where we’ll be with Phoenix in a year’s time, maybe sooner. Just as no notable deep pockets showed up to bail out the Thrash in their town, none ever seem to out in the desert for that hockey club. For good reason.

Strike two for this commish. Anyone wanna bet the bleeding stops with Phoenix?

In recent years I’ve come to the conviction that hockey can not only survive but thrive in non-traditional markets, but that a root infrastructure of support must take hold in these uncommon outposts. Hockey is an expensive sport to play, an expensive sport to patronize 40-plus times a season. It helps a lot to have it located in a community of affluence. Washington passes this test with flying colors. We actually have kids here on travel teams who go up against top competition in New England, the upper Midwest, and Canada and win games. As a community, we invest well in the development of our hockey players, relatively new to the sport though we are, and that investment is paying dividends. DeMatha’s hockey team competed in a top-flight tournament in Maine last season, around the holidays, and the Maryland high school surprised a lot of New Englanders with their competitiveness. DeMatha’s first two lines can often compete with those of many of New England’s power schools. They lose games up there with their third and fourth lines. It’s an issue of depth. I bet that gap closes in the next five or six years.

We aren’t a hockey town merely because we say we are, and we will be one after Alexander Ovechkin retires. And Gary Bettman had nothing to do with our becoming one.

In those earliest hours of the offseason I had already excoriated the Capitals, fairly, for a spectacularly failed season, again, but I wanted days and even weeks to pass before weighing in again with heavy ammo against the status quo.

Mr. Leonsis in his blog that painful morning called for patience and for a cooling off period. “The best course of action for us . . . is to let a few days pass; be very analytic about what needs to be improved; articulate that plan; and then execute upon it.”

And so yesterday, having allowed more than a few days to pass — fully two weeks, in fact — before commenting again on the Caps, Mr. Leonsis appeared on his hockey team’s web site to address Capitals Nation, offering remarks and taking questions from one of his communicators, with what was tantamount to a State of the Hockey Nation update. It did little to comfort the grieving.

For starters, Mr. Leonsis is not availing himself to media this offseason. Not yet, anyway. Capitals’ fans were welcomed to submit questions for yesterday’s streaming summit, but in no way does that approach the accountability that’s part and parcel with stepping up to the scrutiny of media cameras, microphones, and perhaps even a call-it-as-they-see-it corps of bloggers. If the President of the United States stands before the White House press corps, you can be assured of a good grilling, no matter the time of year. And when times are tough, we expect that of our President.

On the positive side of the self assessment ledger, acknowledging the widespread criticism his hockey team has cultivated in spades this spring, the owner yesterday said, “We want to change.” He pointed an accusatory finger at the power play, ranked no. 1 in the league until last spring, and said, “We might have to do something major to the power play because it has let us down last year against [Montreal] and this year against [Tampa Bay].” Big-picturing better, he said, “We’re struggling . . . in translating productivity in the regular season into longer success in the playoffs.”

To put it mildly.

But the format of yesterday’s forum undermined a good deal of discipline of message, and the owner early on in the proceedings, speaking contemporaneously and without interruption, allowed platitudes, a reservoir of accumulated good will, and I think wishful thinking to cloud and clutter what in another setting might have produced some heavy reckoning.

“I can say unequivocally that the regular season does matter,” he alleged.

Well, I can say unequivocally that at this moment in Washington it does not. I certainly said it in my season preview back in the autumn, and I was one of many voices then saying it. By the end of summer there will be four Southeast division title banners hanging from the rafters of Verizon Center commemorating the regular season feats of the past four seasons. Listening to Mr. Leonsis yesterday, I wondered: would the Capitals again try and draw attention to that on opening night in October? If they do, they might be surprised at the Red Army’s reaction to it.

To some extent, hockey’s regular season is diminished by the unrivaled-anywhere-else-in-sports glory of its ultimate prize. For every conspicuously winning-in-regular-season team in the NHL there is by late March something of an exasperation with playing out the string, an unnerving anxiety for the arrival of the true test, and given the turnaround of fortune in this past regular season’s second half for the Caps, and especially given the seeming success of the trade deadline acquisitions, there was an especially pronounced fatigue-anxiety among the Red Army. Long-standing demons of spring oh so badly needed to be exorcised. The regular season certainly seemed to matter here in 2007-08 and its following campaign. The President’s trophy seemed to give meaning to 2009-10. But that spring’s sourness cast a suspicious cloud over 2010-11 — and in point of fact, this past regular season delivered a great deal of stress and woe, infuriating season ticket holders bewildered by blowouts by the Blueshirts. And next season? Many of us in HockeyWashington regarded this spring as a referendum on the existing regime, seeking evidence that 2010′s first-round dismal was an aberration. We don’t have it — not by a longshot.

Surely everyone affiliated with the Caps will have to regard 2011-12 as more a referendum on how this organization is managed than with any previous season in Capitals’ history. But yesterday the owner was anything but aware of such a sensibility. And that is deeply troubling.

To some extent there is a tone deafness to management when it comes to acknowledging this organization’s sordid state in spring. They seem to want to be judged only on the springtimes in the Era of Ovechkin. They fail even in that limited litmus test, but the larger reality — one that reigns league-wide, and for a sizable contingent of the fanbase — is that we are the Chicago Cubs of our sport, and it’s mildly amusing to joke about in fall but something far more sinister in spring. Alexander Ovechkin’s arrival here was meant to address it. Management said as much.

Most egregiously yesterday, Mr. Leonsis said this of his club’s present standing: “There are 29 teams in the league that would trade positions with us.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. To trade places with the Washington Capitals today would be to assume their burden of spring. Sadomasochists wouldn’t take that on. To trade places with the Caps would be to reside in a media market in which John Beck — no relation to Glenn, Google informed me yesterday — is the celebrated athlete of the moment. A condition for which our market is rightly mocked.

To make no mention of the Pittsburgh Penguins, or the Detroit Red Wings, or the Chicago Blackhawks, not even the Toronto Maple Leafs would uproot themselves and trade places with us here. It’s $300-plus for a premium seat in the lower bowl of Air Canada Centre for a hockey game in October. There’s a 24-hour television station devoted to the team for goodness sake. There’s been a lot of losing by the Leafs over the years, but also, though distant now, Glory achieved. And goodness knows Brian Burke is held accountable by Leaf media and fans.

Perhaps most troubling of all yesterday Mr. Leonsis expressed an intellectual incompatibility with the notion that the window may be closing on his team’s status as contender. In point of fact, that window may never have opened. His team isn’t a contender; the Lightning proved that. And as exclamation point, the Lightning, we in Washington are suddenly learning, aren’t in fact the ’76 Canadiens after all. They’re just a good hockey team, nothing more — and better than the Caps by leaps and bounds.

Alexander Ovechkin, the franchise savior, will turn 26 early next hockey season. Today, he seems far removed from his days as a 65-goal scorer. The league seems to have figured him out. Additionally, his leadership quotient seems notably deficient. Presumed key pieces surrounding him suddenly don’t seem daunting, or untouchable. And they are all under the guidance of a man who’s failed to advance past round two of the NHL postseason, when a host of his younger, less experienced colleagues have. But fannies still are filling the seats in Chinatown, so all is good. This is the State of Capitals Nation.

*Correction:* Comment above attributed to Mr. Leonsis — “There are 29 teams in the league that would trade positions with us right now” — was erroneously reported. His full comment in context should have read: “There are 29 teams in the league that would trade positions with us right now to have three young, very, very talented players, all affordable, all with their best days ahead of them and so I’m really happy with how well-stocked we are at the toughest position in the game.”

An agreement to sell the National Hockey League’s Atlanta Thrashers to a Winnipeg group which plans to relocate the franchise to the Manitoba capital is done.

Sources confirmed tonight that preparations are being made for an announcement Tuesday, confirming the sale and transfer of the Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment, which owns and operates the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League and the MTS Centre arena, which would become the NHL team’s new home.

“The Atlanta Thrashers were a professional ice hockey team based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. They were members of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL).”

The entry was subsequently modified. Though perhaps to be modified again — perhaps even today. Because of:

This tweet from Fan590 personality Greg Brady:

Brady added in a subsequent tweet: “Let’s face it. Gary might have needed to keep Coyotes in PHX to free up Winnipeg for Thrashers. Quebec’s not ready in 11-12.”

It's been quite a roller coaster ride for Bruce Boudreau in Washington

The Capitals may or may not have a deficit of leadership on the ice and in the room with this roster, but dogging them most in the initial hours and days of yet another postseason far too early arrived at is an intense debate about their ultimate leader — Bruce Boudreau.

There is anything but consensus on this matter; in fact, it’d be difficult to identify a moment in Capitals’ history when as much high-pitched debate centering on the fate of the coach commanded as much speculation in print space, such a frenzy of pixels on line, and so much oration on the airwaves.

For his critics, Bruce Boudreau is a tale of two seasons — the terrific winning percentage of the regular season campaign juxtaposed by conspicuous struggle in the postseason. Moreover, he’s been bested in the postseason, while guiding favored clubs, by a host of wet-behind-the-ears coaches — John Stevens, Dan Bylsma, and most recently Guy Boucher. General Manager George McPhee on Thursday’s break-up day at Kettler seemed to offer both endorsement of the coach while also acknowledging that no firm decision on his future had been made.

“There’s no difference between a playoff coach and regular season coach. Either you’re a good coach or you’re not. He’s a good coach,” McPhee claimed. To which Yahoo’s Greg Wyshynski replied, “has anyone yet heard from the Capitals why, then, there’s such a difference between their regular-season and postseason success?”

Puck Daddy adds:

“In eliminations against the Pittsburgh Penguins (2009), the Montreal Canadiens (2010) and the Tampa Bay Lightning (2011), Boudreau was outcoached. Bad line changes and too many men on the ice penalties — on a power play, no less — undermined the team against Tampa. He’s been unable to extract the same level of intensity from his players in the postseason as he has the regular season.”

Boudreau’s return for next season, Wyshynski wrote mere minutes after the Capitals’ expulsion from the postseason, “is rightfully in question.” For one of hockey’s most influential voices, Boudreau’s fate in D.C. this spring ought to be dire: “This should be Boudreau’s final game as head coach, because standards need to be higher than this.”

By Friday Jon Press of Japers’ Rink had seen enough of Gabby as well:

“either Bruce Boudreau had the wrong message, or he had the right one and was incapable of getting his players to execute it. Whichever it was, it’s ultimately a poor reflection upon the coach — being an effective communicator and motivator is every bit as important as being an effective tactician and strategist here . . . for whatever reason, he’s never been able to consistently extract from this Caps team a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts when it’s mattered most. It’s time to find someone who can.”

In today’s Boston Globe Kevin Paul Dupont, taking up Washington’s latest springtime collapse and its implications, offers a commendable but brutally frank assessment of how short of success the Capitals have achieved while under Boudreau’s guidance: “Until a team makes it to the conference finals (a.k.a. the Stanley Cup semifinals), its playoff aspirations never really mature beyond “Off Broadway”’ status. Clearly, that cold reality was running through the fingertips of Capitals owner Ted Leonsis when he decided to tickle his computer keyboard immediately after his club’s wipeout Wednesday night at the hands of the Lightning.”

Dupont reminds that Bruins’ GM Peter Chiarelli publicly backed coach Dave Lewis early one offseason only to jettison him 60 days later. And Lewis didn’t get four cracks at postseason play with an elite roster as Boudreau has:

“Something has to change in Washington. It’s just not working when it needs to work the most. Blogger/owner/truthsayer Leonsis has all but written it on the subway walls and tenement halls. And it could be that McPhee will have to send his coach packing, or join him on the subway. For the Cup semis, all they’re hearing each year at the Verizon Center are the sounds of silence. “

Up in Hershey, Bears’ beat reporter Tim Leone, who knows Boudreau perhaps as well as anyone in hockey, defended the coach, stressing the vicissitudes of bounces and inches in the NHL  postseason:

“If Washington wins in overtime in Game 3 for a 3-0 series lead against eventual champion Pittsburgh two years ago, the Caps might already have a Cup in the bank. If Philly’s Jeff Carter gets the puck two inches higher in OT of Game 2 in the first round against Pittsburgh that same year, maybe the Flyers would have won it.

“A coaching change is a reaction way out of proportion to the small margins deciding winning and losing. A dramatic move might immediately feel like it gets you closer to a championship, but in reality it pushes you farther away.”

There are “Ifs” and “buts” that may be used to explain away every misfortune of a close call in a hockey postseason, and in every sport’s postseason for that matter. Ultimately what we have to evaluate are the final results, coldly and dispassionately. The Tampa Bay Lightning didn’t sweep the Capitals out of the playoffs by inches. Their star performers outperformed the Capitals’ stars by leaps and bounds. Michal Neuvirth was good, but Dwayne Roloson was appreciably better. And a real telling discrepancy in this series came from Tampa’s plumbers and muckers — Sean Bergenheim foremost among them — who lept over the boards for every shift and played inspired hockey. The men who wore the Lightning sweater were inspired by their coach. It’s difficult to look at any Capitals’ performance this spring save game 5 against New York and suggest we witnessed inspired hockey players in red and white. And the same could be said of Boudreau’s club when it counted last spring.

Boudreau’s defenders this spring fail to acknowledge that the coach entered this season with a bit of a mandate for the postseason — at least among fans and media. That’s what last spring’s shocking round one dismissal earned, coupled with going one for four in home-ice Game 7s. No one around Washington suggested that if the Caps could merely dust off an 8 seed in round one this spring all would be swell. The Capitals, most believed, needed to make discernible progress. They did not.

It isn’t just that there is a heavy accumulation of poor postseason results — shockingly early, uniformly, and always against lower-seeded teams — that is conspiring strongly against Gabby’s continuation here. It’s how they’ve looked in most of the defeats: tentative and indecisive, frightened at times, even, sloppy, and conspicuously lacking in emotion and drive.

Interestingly, there is probably a good deal of shared sentiment about Boudreau among the firing versus retaining camps this spring. Both sides would probably agree that on the whole, and relative to a majority of his NHL peers, Gabby’s a good coach, of inordinate achievement. Both sides would likely agree, too, that he’s well managed and developed George McPhee’s impressive stable of exceptional young talent. The divergence, I think, arrives at a point not unlike most of us arrived at with Glen Hanlon in the autumn of 2007: another level of accomplishment is needed and appropriate, and there is precious little evidence in this coach’s body of work in Washington that he’s likely to achieve it. Instead, his backers rely on faith.

The past week’s best assessment of the state of the Caps came from our city’s most accomplished and gifted sportswriter, the Post’s Thomas Boswell. Boz was out at break-up day at Kettler on Thursday, and he came away with a clear sense of a deeply troubled Capitals culture.

“At times like this, when a no.1 seed gets swept by a No.5 seed, you line up the firing squad or you line up the excuses. For the second straight year, the Caps went with the excuses . . .

“In a sense, the Caps are trapped by their own culture of decency, self-regard and optimism. They want to give everybody a second, and sometimes a fourth chance, even the coach. They don’t want to act in haste and repent at leisure, even if it means soft players aren’t traded and get to repeat their spring failures. They don’t want to blow up what they’ve built because they believe in sound foundations. But the Caps also flatter themselves that what they have created is a notch better than it actually is. And the Caps hate, hate, hate to admit any evaluation is wrong, until it’s so obvious they can’t deny it.

“Good intentions, good results, then playoff mortification, year after year, followed by the same mantra: There’s nothing wrong. We were just unlucky or injured. Next year: our turn. Keep the sellouts coming.”

Mortification indeed.

More beautiful Boz: “What team reacts to such devastating defeats with equanimity, common sense and a huge sigh of acceptance at life’s unfairness? How estimable. But it drives you nuts.”

Scoring First

How massive the pressure of scoring first tonight is for this organization. I told some friends right after Game 2 that if the Capitals could not pot the puck first in Game 3, the series would be over. It turns out they did score first, even if they didn’t, and it’s the only reason I am not sticking to my prediction — that and hope. These playoffs, the Caps have taken the first lead of the game twice, both times against the Rangers, and both times they won. Tampa Bay has relinquished the lead to the Caps twice (Game 1 and Game 3) in this series. But that volatility in scoring presents the Caps with the challenge of playing two different styles of games, one of catch up and one of disciplined defensive responsibility. I believe it is that very volatility that Tampa dealt with in the regular season and their series against the Penguins that made them comfortable playing in any situation.

There is no denying the Caps have dealt with the same pressures throughout this season and even prior, but I believe they are one-dimensional in the sense that they play either catch up — as they did in Game 4 against the Rangers and Game 2 this series — or team defense. They are the best team in the league when trailing. The inherent problem is that the Caps are a better team, as most are, when they score first and establish their strategy from the first puck-drop. Scoring a tying goal at the beginning of the second period as Knuble did last night, while huge for a team’s momentum, only gives the club 40 minutes to work its system. If the Caps can score first tonight, we should see their resiliency, but if Tampa can shake Washington out of the lead, we will know which club really deserves it.

Coaching

Pucksandbooks sent me a link this morning regarding Keith Jones and Mike Keenan’s reaction to Boudreau’s coaching ability. I watched CSN and didn’t catch their analysis. Last night, Boudreau asked his captain to serve the penalty for the Too Many Men call, which put the clubs four-on-four for well over a minute. The thrust of the Jones and Keenan critique was: How in the world could Gabby have the world’s best player confined to the sin bin for a minute-plus of 4-on-4 play? Additionally, what if Tampa had taken an additional penalty — think the Caps would have liked having Ovi out on the ice in that situation? Boudreau was badly outcoached last year against Montreal, despite going up 3-1 in the series, and he seems to be replicating his naivety of NHL playoff hockey. In fact, he’s making a rookie coach look like Scotty Bowman.

Last night, with Mike Green out, Boudreau elected to have John Carlson sit on the bench while Ovechkin attempted to skate through center ice on the breakout. If there’s been one composed player in the lineup skating the puck at center ice and dumping it deep, it has been Carlson. To leave him on the bench and go with five forwards (Brooks Laich at the other point) and Semin at wing, was in my opinion a grave error. Semin should have been on the bench. There is a reason why Boudreau has above a 70 percent win record in the regular season. There is also a reason why he is 17-19 in the NHL postseason.

Hendrinjection

This has plenty to do with Bruce Boudreau’s questionable coaching decisions, but I believe a dose of Matt Hendricks and possibly the first Caps fight of these playoffs can go a long way in Game 4. Katie Carrera of the Washington Post noted that Hendricks came off the ice early and was seen taping his sticks up, which is a positive sign, but just a sign. In our last post, I dissected the Caps errors and made particular note of the Caps’ inability to win pucks below the circles and behind the net. Hendricks does that for this team and is defensively reliable. Marco Sturm needs to be scratched for this game and Hendricks inserted.

Sturm has been a major on-ice disappointment  for the Caps since arriving, but he is a veteran and his past performances has earned him status. He’s been good for this team as a veteran member with leadership skills, but I don’t believe that he has contributed in any positive or lasting fashion on the playing surface. In fact, putting him on the fourth line is on par with Glen Hanlon’s decision to start Nicklas Backstrom on the Caps third and fourth lines back in 2007. Sturm should be playing at least third line minutes, but as Boudreau has seen his play dip, the coach assigned him fourth line duty for much of last night. Mistake. Hendricks will play the role of a fourth liner and Sturm will not – case closed.

If the Capitals can manage to score first, be composed on the ice and bench, and use Matt Hendricks in the corners and for some rough stuff, there is some hope for success tonight. Just ask Philadelphia or Chicago. Series turnarounds do happen no matter what the odds. Tampa’s hallmark may be the trap but they are also awfully inconsistent. Unless Boudreau & Co. can do to this series what they did in Game 4 against the Rangers, a new regime is in order by week’s end.

WRC’s Jim Iovino is running this project for the Channel 4′s web site, and he’s tailoring the discussions for each round to address emerging topics. So for the start of the second round Jim asked local hockey media to tally up the number of blows likely directed at Mike Green’s head by Tampa. JP delivered a great quip:

Number of times Mike Green will be targeted with a head shot: 0. The League takes the issue of head injuries very seriously and would never let one of its star players — who recently missed two months due to a concussion (or two, depending upon where you get your news) — be the target of such tactics.

Just kidding. He gets targeted once. Per shift.

We told WRC that our “Matchup to watch” involved this series’ specialty teams.

Matchup to Watch: Tampa Bay’s first power play unit versus the Capitals’ PKers. The Lightning had the league’s sixth-best extra-man unit during the regular season (20.5%) and went white hot with the extra man against Pittsburgh (29% — third-best in the postseason). The Caps were the league’s second-best penalty killing team in the regular season (85.6%), and almost perfect at 95% against the Rangers. But Tampa possesses weapons up front on the power play that the Rangers sorely lacked. Tampa’s only real chance to pull off the upset to is draw the Caps into a number of penalty killing situations and to capitalize on a good many of them.

There’s some fantastic analysis and insight with this project, so give it a look before you head down to Chinatown tonight or meet up with your fellow soliders in the Red Army at a local watering hole. We’d like to chime in again for WRC for in-kind collaborations with our new media colleagues two more times this spring.

Andrew: Let’s get right to the point: only the Washington Capitals have the ability to make this a short series. The Tampa Bay Lightning were just in a long seven-game series with the Pittsburgh Penguins and are going to be fatigued, you have to believe, while the Caps have been able to rest. Not only that, but the Caps have more overall talent than the Lightning.

Lis: The regular season games between these two teams were thoroughly unpredictable– blowouts, shutouts, shootouts, overtime wins. And loads of Good Sasha! I completely agree with Andrew that this is the Caps’ series to lose, but I hope they stay aware of the fact that Tampa’s last opponent blew a 3-1 advantage. Ahem.

Andrew: Dwayne Roloson, the ageless wonder, is going to be the key component of this series, I think. Despite being over 40, he has shown he can compete with the NHL’s best and actually help his team win. If Tampa Bay were to upset the Caps, Steve Yzerman’s acquisition of him could be the best trade of the entire year. In one game he stopped over 60 shots agains the Pens, and that is definitely tiring on a goalie. It’d be tiring on a kid like me. The Caps will have to generate a heavy shot total this series in order to beat Roloson — the ‘Bolts are going to block a good many to begin with. They may not beat him right out all that often, but if they can tire him out, Washington’s chances increase dramatically. And generating a heavy volume of shots and being patient could prove the difference, because it’s Washington that possesses offensive depth in this series.

Lis: It’s ironic — despite all the glamor of an Ovechkin/Stamkos matchup, it’s goalies Dwayne Roloson and Michael Neuvirth that lead the NHL playoff statistics in goals against average and save percentage (you won’t find Ovi or Stamkos among the NHL leaders in offensive categories). The Capitals have a cushion as far as backup goalies go, unlike the Lightning. Both netminders bring stellar stats into this series, but the first-round opponents for both clubs, I think, left a lot to be desired in their respective attacks.

Andrew: Tactically, the Caps are going to have to keep several things in mind. First off, they cannot leave Steven Stamkos alone, unaccounted for. The last few years Washington’s defense has had a bad habit of letting Stamkos walk in the slot and have some great chances. But of course this is a much different-looking Capitals’ blueline relative to say just a year ago. While he may not have had a stellar series against the Penguins, Stamkos has the ability to score every time the puck touches his stick. Last series, the Caps never really got their big role players going in terms of offensive production. Getting them going will be key. It is more than just a few good shifts here and there, too; the team will have to get something approaching consistent production from its top forward units, cause you know that Tampa’s going to get production from theirs. Being able to roll four lines gives the Caps the ability to rest their top two threesomes throughout the game to get better production from them in crunch time. Not only that, but two or three scoring lines will make for very long nights for Dwayne Roloson.

Lis: Speaking of Matt Bradley, he has the second-most fights in his career against Tampa. And Matt Hendricks has dropped the gloves against Steve Downie. It’ll also be interesting to see how Alexander Semin does in this series. He seems to score goals against Tampa as easily as Angelina Jolie attracts men (though his two hat tricks against Tampa this season were not with Roloson in net).