There are some certainties in life.
Death.
Taxes.
And the Pittsburgh Penguins completing a playoff series comeback to stomp on the collective hearts of the Washington Capitals and send them meekly into the off-season.
And so it was -- again -- last night in game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinal between these two squads when Sidney Crosby and the Penguins throttled and humbled Alexander Ovechkin and the Capitals, giving them a 6-2 woodshed beating in their own barn with everything on the line and ending Washington's season with a crashing thud.
Continuing their playoff mastery over the Washington franchise, this was the 7th time in 8 playoff series' that the Penguins beat the Capitals, and the 4th -- that's right, FOURTH -- time the Penguins have come back from a 2-0 deficit to do it.
Washington just can't slay the Penguin dragon.
The Penguins also are now 4-0 in 7th games on the road.
With the victory, Pittsburgh has advanced to the Eastern Conference Final for the second straight season, and will play the winner of tonight's game 7 between the Boston Bruins and Carolina Hurricanes.
If Boston prevails, the Penguins will open up the series on the road; if Carolina does, they will open the series at Mellon Arena.
In light of the fact that each of the previous 6 games in this series were close on the scoreboard, last night's result has to be considered at least somewhat of a surprise. But the Penguins stepped on the gas from the opening faceoff and Washington just had no chance.
Rock the red? Not quite.
The red got rocked in this one, folks.
Many believe that the table in game 7 last night was set about 3 minutes in when, inexplicably, Ovechkin managed to get behind the Penguin defense and head in on Pens' goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury on a breakaway.
Ovechkin made a few dekes but, with defenseman Rob Scuderi closing in on him from the left side, #8 could only get off a quick wrister which Fleury swallowed up with his glove to keep the crowd hushed.
Then, at the 12 minute mark of the period, with Pittsburgh on the power play, defenseman Sergei Gonchar -- who returned for game 7 for the first time since his knee-on-knee collision with Ovechkin in game 4 -- put an off-balance shot from the point on goal, but it was deflected on the way and the carom went directly to Crosby's skate. Crosby, standing to the left of Caps' netminder Simeon Varlamov, quickly but calmly took the puck off his skate and deposited the puck into the empty cage to give the Penguins a 1-0 lead.
Before the announcer at the Verizon Center could even spread the good word throughout the building as to who scored, the Penguins won the ensuing faceoff and steamed into the Washington end. Ruslan Fedotenko made a nice pass to 4th liner Craig Adams who beat Varlamov 5-hole with a wrister to give the Penguins a 2-0 lead.
Adams goal -- his first career post-season tally -- came only 8 seconds after Crosby's goal, setting an NHL record for the fastest 2 goals ever in a game 7.
The Penguins outshot the Capitals by a whopping 16-5 in the first period, continuing a series long trend where they brought the heat on Washington early. This time, though, they were able to get the 2-goal cushion -- something which they had trouble doing for most of the series.
Going into the 2nd period, the biggest task for Pittsburgh was to keep Washington from battling back. So many times, the Caps' came out in the 2nd period in this series and reasserted themselves, keeping the Penguins from getting too far ahead.
Not last night.
30 seconds into the 2nd frame, Crosby broke into the Washington zone on a 2-on-2 and decided to pull up with the puck and look for a trailer. Sure enough, RW Bill Guerin came rolling into the zone and, without any back-pressure from a Capitals' player who seemed to be just lolly-gagging on the play, had time to take a pass from #87 and drill it by Varlamov with a slap shot to the far side from about 45 feet to give the Penguins a 3-0 lead.
PIttsburgh then poured it on when, about 90 seconds later, defenseman Kris Letang broke into the Caps' zone 1-on-1 and unleashed a wicked and beautiful slapshot that beat Varlamov high on the short, glove side to up the Pens' lead to 4-0.
Most observers -- myself included -- wasn't certain Letang scored at first because the puck stuck in the net behind the center partition.
With that tally, Caps' coach Bruce Boudreau threw in the towel on Varlamov and pulled him in favor of Jose Theodore.
At the point the Pens' chased the rookie, he had allowed 4 goals on 18 shots.
Having Theodore in made no difference for Washington, however, as Jordan Staal upped the Pens' lead to 5-0 later in the period when he took a quick pass from RW Miroslav Satan in front and quickly steered a short one-timer past Theodore on the far side.
Ovechkin scored for the Caps' on a misplay by Fleury later in the period when Fleury failed to put enough mustard on an attempted pass to one of his defenseman behind the net with #8 steaming in on him. Ovechkin simply stole the pass and quickly wrapped it around the goal and into the empty cage.
Any doubt that remained in the game, however, was squashed early in the 3rd and final frame when Washington took a 4-minute high-sticking penalty on Crosby early in the period.
Deservingly, Crosby made them pay with his 2nd power play tally of the game when Washington -- trying to put offensive pressure on to get back in the game despite being shorthanded -- gave up the puck just inside the Pens' blueline and allowed Crosby to skate in on a breakaway for 120 feet. The Captain made no mistake, making several dekes before beating Theodore 5-hole to make it 6-1 Pittsburgh.
Brooks Laich added a goal for Washington later in the 3rd, but by then, it was way too little, way too late for the Caps'.
After the game, Boudreau indicated that Ovechkin, Green and Semin all were playing with injuries, but didn't specify which. Specifically with regard to Ovechkin, Boudreau claimed that he wouldn't have been playing if it were the regular season.
Personally, I don't buy it. Ovechkin may have been a little banged up but I've watched him a lot the last several seasons and his play over the course of this 7-game series was no less dynamic than it usually is. He had 8 goals and 14 points in the series for heaven's sake. No player has had that many points in a single series in 13 seasons. I don't believe he was limited in any appreciable way.
Semin I can't speak for. He was, after all, terrible in this series. He took a lot of shots, but missed the net more times than I've watched Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls and thought .....
Well, you get the idea. Trust me, it's quite a number of times.
Another key Washington player, defenseman Mike Green, was equally horrible in this series. Boudreau benched him for the 3rd period last night. He had several helpers in this series, but was a shadow of the force he was throughout the regular season.
I've never been a Green fan because he's very easily exposed defensively. The Penguins did that to him repeatedly in this series.
The failure of those players to contribute meaningfully to Washington's cause really hurt them over the long haul in this series.
Meanwhile, one of the biggest reasons why the Penguins' prevailed is because they received a good bit of complementary scoring from their support players -- particularly over the last 4 games of the series.
Pittsburgh also was better defensively in this series than Washington. The Capitals just couldn't hanlde the Penguins' aggressive attack. The Pens outshot the Caps by a whopping 256-180 over the course of the series. That's nearly a 37 shot per game average for Pittsburgh, while Washington averaged only 26 shots per game -- a huge disparity.
The Penguins had some difficulty getting a lot of those shots to go in during the course of the 7-game set, but to their credit, they stuck with it and eventually, the floodgates on Varlamov finally opened. He was the biggest reason why Washington was even still around to play game 7, and he deserves praise for that, but it's hard to continually hold the fort when you have that many chances launched at you over and over again. The failure of the Caps' to contain the Penguins in their own zone and around the net was fatal for them.
The Penguins were ready to play in game 7 last night and it showed. They were focused and intense, and it started with their Captain, who is playing the best hockey of his career.
Crosby -- and not Ovechkin -- was the better player in this series, and that's one of the reasons why his team is moving on and Ovechkin's teams are now 1-2 in the playoffs thusfar.
After having only 6 goals during the Pens' entire post-season run last year, Crosby has already doubled that total and now has 12 after only 2 rounds. He also has 21 points. His goal total, however, is easily within striking distance of the NHL record for most goals in a post-season -- 19. As I mentioned here earlier in this series, that record is held by former Edmonton Oiler RW Jari Kurri.
Crosby deserves a ton of credit for leading his troops past the Capitals' with a revamped scoring touch. Unlike last year when he had Hossa on his line, Crosby himself has become the real scoring threat on his line in this year's playoffs.
Just one more thing about the collective effort of Pittsburgh last night.
The Penguins were an intense, confident, business-like bunch last night. They are a young team, but they have experienced a lot together the last several years. They played like veterans who had been there before, unlike Washington who got caught like a deer in headlights and basically just choked away their opportunity on their own home ice in the biggest game of their careers.
As Laich said after the game, "Winning is a science. You have to learn how to do it."
The Penguins took the Capitals to school on that score last night.
Here's some great reading on last night's game, Crosby, Ovechkin and the outstanding series their two teams waged:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/playoffs/2009/news?columnist=burnside_scott&id=4165407
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4165718&name=09cupplayoffsblog
http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/playoffs/2009/news?columnist=lebrun_pierre&id=4165417
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051303989.html
I just can't say enough about the Penguins or this series. Just great stuff.
More tomorrow when the Penguins' next round opponent is known.
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