The final three-game sweep of the regular season starts in Tampa where the Lightning’s Victor Hedman was only scorer in the talent portion of their game with the Boston Bruins. The goal lifted the Bolts to a 3-2 win and just added one more reason for the Bruins to miss the playoffs this season.
“Pretty remarkable to think what this group has accomplished this year,” Lightning 
coach Jon Cooper said. “It’s just been a lot of fun to be with these guys. I told the guys, ‘Sit back tonight and enjoy this’. We’ve got a few days here to get prepared for Detroit, but they should sit back and reflect on what they accomplished. I don’t know how many teams reach 50 wins in a season.”
After the Bruins stopped an ugly stretch after the New Year, they could not find their game and allowed the Ottawa Senators to rally from 14 points back in the standings.
“It’s tough to find the words right now,” Zdeno Chara said. “It’s something that only the people and players in this room really know how it feels. I think we all feel disappointed.”
Boston can only look to the players in the locker room and not elsewhere to see where the fault lies.
“It never should have come to this point, we had a lot more chances to get ourselves in the playoffs before [Saturday] and we shot ourselves in the foot,” Bruins center Patrice Bergeron said. “I never thought we’d be in this situation and it’s tough to get my head around it right now.”
And now the second guessing begins most likely with the man behind the bench.
“It’s a failed season for us,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “When you don’t make the playoffs, you fail. You’d like to think that everybody in there is a proud athlete and certainly not taking this lightly. We’ve just got to be ready to rebound here and hopefully get ourselves going in the right direction.”
In Buffalo, the Pittsburgh Penguins needed a win, simple as that. And lucky for them they were up against the Sabres.
But the Sabres and Anders Lindback put up a solid effort but lost 2-0. Lindback had 36 saves in the loss.
The Penguins now face the New York Rangers in the opening round.
“We know them well, they know us well, so there shouldn’t be any surprises there,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said. “It should be a pretty intense, physical series but like I said hopefully we can kind of ride this momentum a bit here, getting this big win and continue it into the playoffs.”
Momentum maybe but the Pens still faced a touch test from a club with nothing to play for Saturday.
“This is a real good group of guys,” Sabres coach Ted Nolan said. “You don’t have to be the most skilled or the best players in the world to be a professional team or act like a champion. These guys are a good group, they played hard. That was one of the things I mentioned before the game, play hard for the fans.”
In the Washington, the Rangers faced the Capitals and skated off with a 4-2 win and more importantly no series injuries for either side.
“Our guys wanted to play the right way,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said. “We knew that Washington was still playing for home-ice advantage, so they were going to come out hard and playing well. It was a hard game, but we were able to get it done.”
The Caps secured home ice in the opening round with the second seed in the division.
“It was a goal at the beginning of the season, to get home-ice advantage,” Capitals defenseman Karl Alzner said.
“The guys in here are excited for the playoffs to start, excited for the challenge,” winger Troy Brouwer said. “We’ve got to bounce back. We can be a dangerous team when we bounce back.”
Henrik Lundqvist made 22 saves for the win in a tune-up for the post season; it was his 30th win of the season.
“Coming back after two months off, I set a personal goal to reach 30 wins,” Lundqvist said. “I knew it was going to be a challenge, but the guys played really well and really helped me find my game. I feel well prepared and I’m excited to get going here in the playoffs.”
Braden Holtby had 30 saves in the loss.
“We came out a little bit flat in the first [period] and they capitalized,” Capitals coach Barry Trotz said. “They didn’t get a lot of chances, but they capitalized. We had some decent looks, and we didn’t capitalize. At the end of the day we were chasing the game.”
The madness starts Wednesday, 15 April.
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