Caps and Cats Prepare for Game 2

May 5 vs. Florida Panthers at FLA Live
Game 2, Eastern Conference Quarterfinal Series (Washington leads, 1-0)
Time: 7:30 p.m.
TV: NBCSW, TBS
Radio: Capitals Radio 24/7, 106.7 The Fan
Washington Capitals (44-26-12)
Florida Panthers (58-18-6)

Game 1 of the opening round Stanley Cup Playoff series between the Caps and the Florida Panthers is in the books, and the two teams are now preparing for Game 2 here in Florida, on Thursday night. The Capitals skated off with a Game 1 victory, coming back from a 2-1 deficit at the outset of the third period to earn a 4-2 victory over the favored Panthers, winners of the 2021-22 Presidents' Trophy as the NHL's top regular season team.
Washington scored three times in the third to win the series opener, doing so against a Florida team that posted a 39-0-1 record - the best in the NHL - when leading after two periods of play during the '21-22 regular season.
For the Capitals, the only downside of Tuesday's victory was the loss of right wing Tom Wilson to a lower body injury before the midway point of the first period. Wilson left the game after three shifts totaling just 1:31 in ice time, and Caps coach Peter Laviolette said on Wednesday that Wilson's availability for Thursday's Game 2 would be a game-time decision.
The Capitals turned in a stellar overall team game in the series opener, but the team's attack was paced by its best players, and the core of its 2018 Stanley Cup championship team. Of the eight members of that 2017-18 Cup team who were in the lineup on Tuesday night, seven of them recorded a point. The only one of that Cup championship octet who did not pick up a point on Tuesday was defenseman John Carlson, who led the team with 25:38 in ice time in the series opener. Carlson also took a high hit in the waning seconds of Game 1, but Laviolette says the defenseman is "fine."
"For any team to be successful, your best players have to be the best," says Caps center Nic Dowd. "And the guys that log the most minutes have to be better than the other team's guys that log the most minutes. That's honestly how it works.

"You look at every team that is successful. Their best players -- their top, top players in the league that you have on your team - they have to be the best players. [Tuesday] night our best players were great. And yeah, I think throughout the lineup you have to have everybody playing their best game, regardless of if you played 25 minutes or if you played eight minutes. You never know when that opportunity is going to change a game, and you never know what shift is going to create an outcome for the series.
"[Tuesday] night, the guys that were going over the bench each time, everybody played a great game and had good shifts back-to-back-to back, and we were consistent with what we were doing, which I thought was what really made us successful."
"Yes, it's important that your best players are your best players," Laviolette affirms. "I thought that everybody played a pretty good game [Tuesday] night; your guys who play the roles, your defenseman who scores all the points. All of our defenseman needed to be good [Tuesday] night, and so I thought that the guys were pretty complete with their game, and our best players were really good - the guys who put up points on the power play and make a difference. They were really good, but I think it goes a little bit bigger than that when you're trying to beat a team like Florida and the success that they've had this year."
Speaking of bigger, Anthony Mantha stepped up in Wilson's absence and delivered an assertive and impactful Game 1 performance. Mantha delivered a team-high 10 hits - his most "ever," he says - assisted on game's first goal, and pulled down just over 19 minutes by night's end, more than three minutes over his nightly average from the regular season.
"It's playoff hockey," says Mantha. "If I'm looking for [my] first goal, I need to be a threat some other way, and that's how I wanted to play [Tuesday], and hopefully I keep playing that way the whole series."

With a Game 1 win in the books, the Caps will now game plan for the possibility of a Wilson absence for Game 2, and they'll aim to keep their foot to the pedal either way. For the Panthers, it's a matter of making some adjustments, and shaking off Tuesday's setback.
"I think you learn from them and you move on," says Panthers interim coach Andrew Brunette. "There's lots of things that we could have did better, but that's the game and a lot of things they did really good. So it's a game of adjustments, and we've got to some things a little differently and a little bit more efficient."
"The first game is over and done with," says Florida winger Anthony Duclair. "You want to move on, and you're obviously going to feel a little bit more comfortable as the series goes on. It's definitely going to be a high pace every game, but for us, we want to turn the page and start fresh [Thursday]."
Florida averaged 4.11 goals per game this season, the highest rate of any team in the NHL since 1995-96. In limiting the Cats to two goals in the opener, Washington was effective at limiting sustained stretches in its own end, and forcing the Cats to play more in their zone. The Caps also did a good job of limiting the Panther's speed through neutral ice, although Florida's first goal came on an end-to-end rush from Sam Bennett.
"I think we had to figure out it's going to be hard, and we haven't had a lot of hard games," said Brunette following Game 1. "And we didn't handle it as well as we'd like to, we weren't as sharp as we'd like to [be], we lost a little energy, and this is a good eye-opener.
"This is playoff hockey. I could talk until I'm blue in my face to them until they go through this and remind themselves how hard it was last year, and how hard you have to play, and that every puck and every play means something. So that was a good reminder for us, and we're going to have our hands full, obviously. We knew that coming in, and they let us know [in Game 1]."