Washington Capitals vs New York Islanders

It was a crazy run down the stretch for the Atlantic division as well as the wild card positions. But when the dust settled the New York Islanders secured the 1st wild card spot to the dismay of critics who thought the Isles would be in the draft lottery rather than the playoffs. Their prize is drawing the Metropolitian division winning Washington Capitals in round 1. Lets dive into the match-up.

New York Islanders / 43-30-9

vs

Washington Capitals / 50-26-6

The season series saw the Capitals win 3 of the 4 games against their divisional opponent.

Game 1 - The Isles won 3-1 at home out shooting the Caps 26 - 23 and controling the play with good puck possession numbers. Freddie Andersen was the star of the show making 22 saves.

Game 2 - This game was dominated from start to finish by the Capitals who shutout the Isles 4-0 on home ice. The stars of this game were the Caps 2nd line duo of Hanzal and Pouliot who put up 2 points each. This game was typical Capitals, winning the majority of faceoffs and seemingly always having the puck on their sticks.

Game 3 - A 5-1 win for the Capitals on the road even though they were out shoot 33-22. Roberto Luongo had a great game but the star of this match was by far Sean Couturier who had 2 goals and 1 assist all  with about 10 minutes of even strength ice-time. Isles goalie Andersen was chaised in the 3rd period after only stopping 14 of 19 shots.

Game 4 - The late season meeting saw the Isles get shutout 2-0 with Luongo stopping all 25 shots fired his way. Again the Caps 2nd line stole the show leading the way offensively and putting up good possession numbers.

Total goals - Capitals 12 / Islanders 4

Here are the Capitals projected lines for game 1 based on where players were in practice yesterday:

Ondrej Palat - Anze Kopitar - Loui Eriksson

Benoit Pouliot - Martin Hanzal - Radim Vrbata

Anders Lee - Sean Couturier - Alex Burmistrov

Tobias Rieder - Brian Boyle - Jonathan Marchessault

Francois Beauchemin - Justin Faulk

Marc Staal - Aaron Ekblad

Zbynyk Michalek - Dan Girardi

Roberto Luongo

Andrei Vasilevskiy

Scratches: Patrick Dwyer, Clayton Stoner, Matt Hackett

There appears to be no changes to team strategy. Roberto Luongo had a 13 game vacation late in the season and should be fresh for this years playoff run, that could be a big benefit and a difference maker from the teams last two playoff runs.

Of the 11 GM's to place predictions, 10 picked the Capitals and 1 picked the Islanders. The series is scheduled to kick off tonight @ 7:30pm EST on NBC.