Tom Wilson scored for the Washington Capitals just 28 seconds into the game Sunday night.
The Tampa Bay Lightning responded with two goals later in the first period to take a 2-1 lead into the middle frame.
That lead was precarious and built on two power play goals.
But 5-on-5 hockey was clearly the Caps’ strength of the night and they reeled off five unanswered goals en route to a 6-2 win in Game 2 for a 2-0 series lead.
“It’s huge, but it’s not over yet,” Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin said. “We’re going to come back home and do our thing and take another one. It’s going to be hard. They have tremendous players over there and we just have to play the same way and don’t give them anything.”
Ovechkin had a goal and assist in the win.
The big goal of the second period was the game-tying marker from Devante Smith-Pelly early in the second period and that ignited the Washington push.
“That was a big, big goal for our group, and after that, I think it really changed,” the Capitals’ Brett Connolly said. “Everything changed, and we just kept pushing and pushing, and then we got it to 6-2.”
At that point, what little push back the Lightning had evaporated.
“If there is one thing I can sit here and say about these two games, it’s we just played tentative and a little bit slow,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “We didn’t get 113 points by playing that way. We didn’t win the first two rounds by playing that way. These first two games, that’s the way we’ve played.”
Braden Holtby made 33 saves to get the win.
Brayden Point and Steven Stamkos scored the power play goals for the Bolts.
“You’d think we’d learn from our mistake in Game 1, but they get one and that’s really a killer going down 4-2 instead of 3-2,” Stamkos said. “It’s little details of the game at this time of the year, and they’ve executed and we haven’t.”
Evgeny Kuznetsov, Lars Eller and Connolly also scored for the Caps.
“I said it this morning, everyone is stepping up,” Ovechkin said. “We played hard. We played smart and you can see all the four lines did their job. We didn’t force it. We just did our job.”
The two road wins in Tampa extend the Caps’ success this post season after road win against the Columbus Blue Jackets and Pittsburgh Penguins in the first two series.
“I feel like we spend much more time together on the road and it shows up in our game. But overall for us, it doesn’t matter where we play, who we play against. It’s our game,” Kuznetsov said after the game.
The game got chippy at the end with pushing and shoving and retaliation hits and trips.
“They look like they’re frustrated a little but over there. We’ve got to keep playing hard, keep playing fast and stay on them,” Connolly said after the win. “But it’s a long series. They’ve got a great team and a lot of guys over there who are gamers. They’re not going to quit, so we’ve got to keep going.”
[WATCH: All Capitals vs. Lightning highlights | Complete Lightning vs. Capitals series coverage]
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 31 saves in taking the loss.
“Sometimes adversity is gut-check time and let’s see who we really are. We haven’t had to really deal with that so far in the playoffs, now we are so we’ll see what type of team we are,” Stamkos said after the Game 2 loss.
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