After an impressive 50-24-8 regular season, the Capitals now look to do something they haven't done in 11 years: win a playoff series. Standing in their way are the New York Rangers, who went 43-30-9 and head into the postseason on a three game winning streak.

 

The teams have met four times in the playoffs, but not since the 1993-1994 season when the Rangers defeated the Caps in the Eastern Conference Semifinals en route to a Stanley Cup Championship. Prior to that, Washington ended New York's season two years in a row in 1990 and 1991, and the Rangers took the first series between the two in 1986.

To give you an idea of what to look for in the first round series this season, the three Capitals beat writers have each broken down a different aspect of the match-up.

High-flying Offense or Shutdown Defense?
By Craig Stone

The first round playoff series between the East's second-seeded Capitals and seventh-seeded New York Rangers promises to be a classic offense-versus-defense battle.

The Caps averaged 3.27 goals per game in the regular season, good for third-most in the NHL. The Rangers allowed just 2.58, the sixth-fewest in the league.

Washington boast's the second-ranked power play in the league, converting on 25.2 percent of their opportunities. The Broadway Blueshirts will counter with the league's most effective penalty kill, having only allowed opposing power play units to convert 12.2 percent of the time.

When applying the old sports cliché that defense wins championships, these statistics don't seem to bode well for the Capitals as they attempt to get to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since the franchise's only Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 1998. But if good defense cancels out good offense, what explains the 13-point difference in the standings?

That can be summed up by each team's "lesser" components.

While the Caps relied on a high-powered offense and power play to compensate for a merely mediocre defense and penalty kill, the Rangers failed to complement their ability to keep opponents off the scoreboard with any kind of ability to get themselves on it.

The Rangers' paltry 200 goals scored in the regular season ranked third-to-last in the NHL and their 13.9 percent power play conversion rate was next-to-last.

While certainly not stellar, the Capitals' 240 goals against in the regular season ranked 19th in the NHL and their 80.6 percent effectiveness on the penalty kill was 17th, both in the middle third of the league.

So while the obvious question is if the Capitals offense can break through the stingy Rangers defense, maybe the bigger difference between the two teams is Washington's middling defense over New York's downright awful offense.

Battle of the Netminders
By David Nichols

The Rangers' Henrik "The King" Lundqvist this season was 11th in the league in goals against average, at 2.43, and his save percentage was 12th at .916. These marks are just a tick below his NHL career numbers, but don't let the small dip in stats fool you; Lundqvist is an elite goaltender that can control a playoff series.

He has excelled in every league or tournament he's played in, including leading Sweden to the Olympic gold medal in the 2006 games. He makes shooters beat him upstairs as he concentrates on taking away the bottom part of the net, so Washington has to put lots of shots on goal, shoot upstairs and create traffic to beat The King.

Oh, and Lundqvist enters the game hot, going 3-1-0, 1.51, .949 in his last four games played.

For the Capitals, it's as simple as this: If good Jose Theodore shows up, this series should be no contest. If bad Jose Theodore shows, all bets are off.  More than likely it will be a little of each as it has been all season.

Theodore won 32 games this year, but his quality numbers (2.87, .900) are the worst of any goalie in the playoffs. He finished 36th in the league in goals against and 40th in save percentage, below all other playoff goalies except for Detroit's Chris Osgood.  He has had stretches where he has played very well, but games where he has looked truly awful.  Theodore has a proclivity for giving up big rebounds, something that has plagued him his entire career, and he is one of the worst stick-handling goalies in the league.  

He's left-handed, which gives some shooters fits, and he's got a decent glove and blocker pad.  Theodore's quickness is his strength, even if he is not the greatest skater between the pipes.  

Theodore is proud to say that he has never lost a first round playoff series, so Caps fans hope that stands.  Looking at the numbers though, they don't look much different than his regular season numbers, as his career 2.75 GAA in 47 playoff matches will attest to.

The Caps' alternatives if Theodore struggles are Simeon Varlamov (4-0-1, 2.37, .918 in six games), a talented but inexperienced rookie that has never played in the playoffs, or Brent Johnson (12-6-3, 2.81, .908 in 21 games), who has not seen a shot fired in anger since before Valentine's Day.  Johnson had hip surgery and has not played since Feb. 1.  He only returned to practice in full pads two weeks ago.

Key Matchups
By Abram Fox

Though this series will be decided by the collective teams on the ice, several particular matchups stand out as having a major impact.

Bruce Boudreau vs. John Tortorella:
First of all, the responsibility of deciding who to play and when falls on the respective head coaches, Bruce Boudreau and John Tortorella, and their staffs.

Tortorella, the winningest American-born NHL head coach, has a 251-232-37-40 record in the NHL and owns a Stanley Cup ring as head coach of the 2003-2004 Tampa Bay Lightning. Boudreau has a much more limited NHL resume, 87-41-15 over nearly two seasons with Washington.  In the playoffs Torts is 24-21 while Boudreau is only 3-4.

Though he is not afraid to show his anger, Boudreau is a player's coach.  Tortorella is a firebrand whose intense personality was praised by Rangers General Manager Glen Sather upon the coach's hiring in late February.  After Tortorella came aboard the Rangers finished the season 12-7-2.

Boudreau is the inveterate tinkerer, often changing his lines repeatedly during a game and rarely keeping any offensive trio together for more than a few games.  Despite the focus on his personality, Tortorella is obviously capable of making shrewd in- and between-game adjustments.

Winning the chess match won't guarantee a series victory, but it will go a long way to putting their respective teams in a position to win.

Alexander Ovechkin vs. Dan Girardi:
Tortorella relied on the defensive pairing of Marc Staal and Dan Girardi as his top pair during the regular season and has indicated he intends to do the same in the playoffs.  Their numbers — Staal's line for the regular season reads 3 goals, 12 assists, 15 points with a minus-7 rating and 64 penalty minutes, and Girardi's reads 4-18-22, -14, and 53 PIM — belie their abilities as shut-down defenders.
 
Staal is unquestionably the better player of the two, but he plays on the left side.  That means that when Ovechkin strides down the left wing looking for a shot, it will be Girardi standing in his way more often than not.

Girardi has been criticized this season for his reluctance to throw his body around, which will be a significant problem for the 6-foot-2, 200 pound defenseman against the 6-foot-2, 212 pound Russian wrecking ball.

Ovechkin is a known quantity.  The question will be whether or not Girardi is up to the task of controlling him or if Ovechkin will overpower his counterpart in blue.

Washington's Young Guns vs. Sean Avery:
The antics of Sean Avery have been well documented.  He will probably score a few goals and earn a few penalty minutes, but his true value comes with his success at disrupting his opponents.

Say what you will about Avery's merits, he is very intelligent and knows exactly who to harass and what buttons to push.  As a member of the Rangers he was key to the team's first round playoff victories in 2007 and 2008, all but eliminating the effectiveness of superstars Ilya Kovalchuk and Martin Brodeur in a sweep of Atlanta and a 4-1 series victory over New Jersey, respectively.

As talented as they are, Ovechkin, Alexander Semin, Mike Green and Nicklas Backstrom are all extremely young, and particularly the first three have demonstrated susceptibility to the pestering at which Avery excels.  In the past two years the Caps have only seen Avery twice, once late last season and then this October while he was a member of the Dallas Stars, so the two-week long dose of his antics may be more than any but the veterans can handle.

Will Ovechkin be able to ignore the pest or will he relish the chance to chase after Avery, the way he did against Evgeni Malkin last season, to the detriment of his own offensive play? Will Green get caught for a retaliation penalty after the play like he did with some frequency during the regular season? Will Semin try to play bongos on Avery's head?

Washington unquestionably has more talent.  The question then becomes, can they maintain their focus?

 

 

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