Road Closure

Evgeny Kuznetsov started this second-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Penguins with a goal just 17 seconds into the first period of Game 1. On Monday night in Pittsburgh, Kuznetsov closed the set with a breakaway goal at 5:27 of overtime, lifting the Caps to a 2-1 win in Game 6, and vanquishing the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins.

"It's a good feeling," says Caps goalie Braden Holtby, who picked up his eighth win of a playoff season for the first time in his career. "We really had to work for this, too. It wasn't easy; different types of adversity - some of it out of our control, some injuries - and we just stuck with it. We got huge performances from role guys, from leaders, from our big guys on different nights.

"It feels good right now, but it's still not our main goal."

With the win, the Caps finish off the Flightless Fowl and move on to the Eastern Conference final for the first time in 20 years. Washington won a playoff series over Pittsburgh for just the second time in 11 tries over the years, and for the first time since 1994. In doing so, the Caps stopped the Penguins' streak of nine straight best-of-seven series wins one shy of the record established by the 1955-60 Montreal Canadiens.

"It's not a great feeling," says Pens captain Sidney Crosby. "Obviously it was a close series and overtime could have went either way tonight. But they got a big goal there."

Washington was strong in the neutral zone all night, and it won the game and the series on a neutral-zone transition play.

From his own end of the ice, Pens defenseman Kris Letang fed Crosby in the neutral zone, but Kuznetsov spanked the puck off Crosby's stick. It went to Dmitry Orlov, who quickly bumped it to Alex Ovechkin just inside the Washington line. Ovechkin threaded a soft lead pass ahead for Kuznetsov, who was gaining speed as he was blowing through neutral ice, right up the middle and between beleaguered Pens blueliners Letang and Brian Dumoulin.

Kuznetsov blazed past the defensemen and slid the puck through the five-hole of Pittsburgh goaltender Matt Murray, just as he did in the third period of Game 5 in Washington on Saturday.

"I think if you look back, it's all about the plays between the bluelines," says Kuznetsov. "We got the turnover and then it's a good transition to breakaway. When you get the breakaway in those type of games, you don't really think what you're going to do, you just try to do something. But it ended up it worked pretty well."

"I see Kuzy was over there," says Ovechkin, "and I just put puck in the space. He did what he does best. I was praying, 'Please, score goal.'"

He did.

"I got a piece of it," recounts Crosby, referring to the pass from Letang, "and then tried to get it again. They transitioned pretty quick, but obviously I would have liked to have handle that cleanly. It wouldn't be going back the other way if I did."

Scoring chances were difficult to come by for both sides throughout the night, but Holtby had to thwart one of them before the game was two minutes old. After the Caps turned the puck over high in their own zone, Holtby made a quick pokecheck on Pens winger Phil Kessel down low before he could pull the trigger.

Each team had a single power play opportunity in the game, and T.J. Oshie fired a shot off the right goalpost from the slot during Washington's only extra-man opportunity, some five minutes into the game.

Washington grabbed a 1-0 lead early in the second period. Playing in his first career Stanley Cup playoff game, Nathan Walker took a feed from Jay Beagle and carried into Pittsburgh ice along the left wing wall. Walker lugged the puck around the back of the net and put a pass to the right circle for Alex Chiasson, who snapped a shot through Murray on the short side at 2:13.

The Caps generated some momentum from that goal, and they elevated that momentum with a few strong offensive-zone shifts ahead of the midpoint of the middle frame. Playing on the right side of the top line, lefty-shooting Chandler Stephenson shot wide from he right circle on a one-timer try off a feed from Alex Ovechkin, and later on the same shift, Kuznetsov was the beneficiary of a Pens turnover down low, but his shot sailed high.

A couple minutes after those missed opportunities, Pittsburgh pulled even. Right after a television timeout, Sidney Crosby beat Kuznetsov on a right-dot draw in Washington ice, pulling the puck back to Brian Dumoulin. Dumoulin slid it across for partner Kris Letang, and he let fly from center point. Holtby made the save and froze the puck.

Crosby won the ensuing right-dot draw, again back to Dumoulin, and again it went across to Letang. This time, the Pens defenseman fired a shot that tipped off Stephenson and into the cage, tying the game at 1-1 at 11:52 of the second.

Pittsburgh seized momentum at that point, but the Caps were able to weather the storm and keep the roof on the building. Holtby had to make one last excellent stop before the second intermission; he shrugged away a Justin Schultz shot from the slot with his left shoulder with fewer than 10 seconds remaining in the middle period.

Both sides survived some close calls the rest of the way - the Pens' Tom Kuhnhackl hit the post in overtime - before Kuznetsov put the series in the books in overtime.

With Nicklas Backstrom (upper body injury) joining fellow top-six forwards Andre Burakovsky (upper body) and Tom Wilson (league suspension) on the sidelines for Game 6, Washington had extremely limited firepower, so it had to play a tight-checking, muddy style of game.

The Caps executed that game plan to a tee, holding the Penguins without a shot on goal for several minutes more than once, and frustrating their top players. Pittsburgh went more than 10 minutes without a shot on net in the second, and took nearly nine minutes to record its first shot on goal of the third period.

"They were just the better team," says Murray of the Capitals. "I thought they played a heck of a game tonight. It didn't feel like we had many [scoring] chances at all. They're a great team and they showed it. They deserved to win tonight."

"Great feelings, obviously," says Ovechkin. "We battled through it; we worked hard. Obviously we knew we had to take this opportunity and get a win. Great job by everybody."