Washington Capitals Playoffs: Observations From The First Two Games

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are in full swing now. Or they are for the Washington Capitals anyways. It’s a different story for Canada. We are now two games into the series vs the Boston Bruins. It’s tied 1-1 with the series shifting to Boston.

It’s been a pretty close series if you’re talking about the score. I think you could make a legitimate argument both teams could have a 2-0 lead. Washington more so thanks to having leads later in both games. The series is in fact 1-1 however. There have been several things to notice early on in this series. As the series changes location I think now would be a good time to look at some of the things I think has stood out.

This Series Will Hurt

We are just two games into the series and there has been plenty of guys going down their teams tunnel. To name just a few, Vitek Vanecek, T.J. Oshie, Nick Jensen and Lars Eller have all walked that painful walk on the Caps side. Bergeron took a trip down the walk way in Game 1 and Marchand looked very uncomfortable during game 2 at one point.

If you want to win this series you are going to have to want to go through some pain, unfortunately. A lot of the time you can look back at series like this and say this is the kind of series you need to win to win the Stanley Cup. If you win a series like this confidence has to be high.

That being said, you do have to actually get through the series without too many injuries. The Capitals were a banged up team coming into the playoffs and hopefully, they don’t have many lingering injuries right now.

Lars Eller also left game 2 and did not return, making the center position even thinner. It was reported Connor McMichael was recalled to be a “black ace”. Maybe he could draw in if Eller is unable to play Game 3 and beyond? Or maybe Evgeny Kuznetsov could make a return. Any way you look at it Eller’s injury could prove to be huge.