Washington Capitals playoff hockey is coming soon.
The NHL recently announced a Return to Play plan that includes a 24-team Stanley Cup playoff tournament. What does this mean for the Washington Capitals?
Well for starters, the Capitals won’t have to worry about any elimination games for quite a while, yet that doesn’t mean they’re completely off. They still have an opportunity to feel out the ice and get in game shape with three round robin games to determine the seeding.
For other teams, the qualifying round will be composed of best of five series. The Caps won’t have to worry about a qualifying round since they finished in the top four. All the other rounds will be a best of seven series.
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As far as the seeding goes, in each round the highest remaining seed in each conference will face the lowest remaining seed, the second-highest remaining seed in each conference will face the second-lowest remaining seed and so on.
The Caps will have to travel to one of the two hub cities that the league is still determining due to novel coronavirus conditions, testing ability, and government regulation. Per Tom Gulitti of NHL.com, a comprehensive system for testing will be in place in each hub city and each team will be permitted to travel a maximum of 50 personnel including players, coaches, and staff.
The Caps, instead of a qualifying round, will have to face the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Boston Bruins, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Philadelphia Flyers. The Caps are ranked third among those teams listed in the standings with a 41-20-8 record and a .652 winning percentage.
It’s hard to get a read on how these teams are going to look after over two-plus months of no ice hockey being played and not everyone has set foot on the ice in phase two of Return to Play. As of this writing, the Caps have yet to announce when they’ll reopen their facility for players to train.
But as far as predictions go, I see the Caps going 2-1 in the three round-robin games. They will fall to the Bruins in a high-scoring affair. They’ll get a win over the Lightning, a gutsy 4-3 final that sees Alex Ovechkin score twice. Finally, it’s the Flyers and after two tough losses on their home ice to Philly, the Caps come back and get a physical, grind it out type of win. Warning to Philadelphia, look out for Garnet Hathaway once they go after Tom Wilson.
As far as the rest of the playoffs, it remains to be seen but we’d love to know what your predictions are too.
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