How the Capitals finally overcame the Penguins

The 2017-18 season marked the fourth time in the Sidney Crosby-Alex Ovechkin era that the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals would meet in the second-round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Just as it was in the previous three meetings, this one was basically a coin-flip series.

For the Capitals, the coin finally landed on heads when Evgeny Kuznetsov's overtime goal in Game 6 sent them to the Eastern Conference Final.

In their four meetings over the past decade, it would be almost impossible for the two teams to play closer.

They have played 26 head-to-head games in the playoffs during that stretch. The Penguins have won 14; the Capitals have won 12. The Penguins have scored 79 goals, the Capitals 74. Sixteen of the 26 games were decided by just a single goal, with eight of those games going to overtime. Only six of those games were decided by more than two goals.

When it comes to the two megastars — Crosby and Ovechkin — they, too, have pretty much matched each other individually, with Crosby scoring 13 goals and tallying 30 total points in the 26 games, while Ovechkin has 15 goals and 33 total points.

At no point in this head-to-head rivalry was one team significantly ahead of the other. Still, the Penguins were always the team coming out on the winning side ... until this year.

So what changed for the Capitals this time around? It really comes down to a couple of key factors, with the biggest being, quite simply, goaltending.

It can sometimes be tough and unfair to narrow an entire series down to just one player, but if there is a position in hockey that can drastically shift a series, goaltending is the one that usually does it. Both teams have accomplished NHL goalies. Pittsburgh's Matt Murray is a two-time Stanley Cup winner. Washington's Braden Holtby is a Vezina Trophy winner and one of the most productive goalies in the NHL over his career.

In a matchup that is consistently as close as this one is, it only takes a handful of goals — maybe even one or two — to completely shift the outcome of the series. Every save matters. Every shot is magnified. In the previous three meetings, the Penguins were able to get the better of the goaltending, no matter who took their spots in the respective goal creases. Just look at the save percentages for each team in each series:

• Pittsburgh: .887 (2009), 926 (2016), .922 (2017), and .904 (2018)
  
• Washington: .889 (2009), .923 (2016), .887 (2017), and .920 (2018)

Notice the big differences? Goaltending matters. This year the Capitals were able to finally get the upper hand.

But that was not the only change in their favor. A lot of times in the playoffs the best players have a tendency to cancel each other out because they either match each other goal for goal or shut each other down. It then comes down to which team gets better production from the depth players. Again, in recent years this was an advantage that went to the Penguins. Once again this year Crosby and Ovechkin were virtually identical when it came to their production (each scored three goals; Crosby had 10 total points to Ovechkin's seven).

The problem for the Penguins is that they simply could not score when Crosby was not on the ice — only one of their 14 goals in the series came without him on the ice. Most of the offense went through him and Jake Guentzel.

Trying to win as a one-line team in the playoffs is not a great recipe, and in the Penguins' previous Stanley Cup-winning runs they were balanced four-line teams that got offensive production from every line.

The Capitals, meanwhile, received eight goals in the series without Ovechkin on the ice.

Then there is just the simple luck factor and getting the right bounce at the right time. That, too, finally went in the Capitals' favor this year. Who knows what happens in Game 7 if Tom Kuhnhackl's shot in overtime goes in off the post instead of bouncing away harmlessly. Just as nobody knows what might have happened in Game 7 a year ago if Alex Ovechkin's shot that deflected off the knob of Marc-Andre Fleury's stick in a tie game had been a quarter of an inch in either direction. Sometimes you need that bounce. The Capitals got it this year — just as they got the goaltending and the depth scoring.

Put it all together and it was the perfect storm for the Capitals to finally get the result to go in their favor.