BRANDON Anthony Duclair Jersey Womens , Fla. (AP) Jon Cooper is confident the Tampa Bay Lightning will be fine.Experience tells the coach and his players they shouldn’t be overly concerned about losing the opening game of the Eastern Conference finals at home.The way the Washington Capitals are playing, though, it could be more difficult to rebound from a shabby performance this time.Game 2 is Sunday night, and Cooper expects the Atlantic Division winners to be at their best.”It’s unfortunate how we played a couple of these Game 1s in the last couple of rounds, (and) dug ourselves a small hole this series,” the coach said after a workout Saturday at the team’s suburban practice facility.”I guess the positive side is we’ve been here before, so we’ve seen this. But we can’t keep playing with fire and dropping these Game 1s, which we’ve done. All of a sudden you’ve thrown home ice advantage back at them. Now you’ve put pressure on yourself. You got to go win games on the road, which you have to do anyway in the playoffs, but your margin for error gets smaller and smaller. We’re really going to need a good effort (Sunday).”The Capitals won the opener 4-2, ending an eight-game playoff losing skid to Tampa Bay dating to the 2003 postseason.Alex Ovechkin, T.J. Oshie, Jay Beagle and Lars Eller scored for Washington Jordan Nolan Jersey Womens , while rejuvenated goaltender Braden Holtby stopped 19 shots to help the Caps improve to 6-1 on the road this postseason.The Lightning didn’t take solace in breaking through for a pair of third-period goals.”We dissected the game a little bit,” Cooper said. ”There were so many good things we’ve done in two rounds of hockey that I think if you bottled up all the bad things in those first 10 games it would be about half of what we did in that one game last night.”You fueled the fire of a good team, and that’s what Washington is. I thought a lot of their opportunities we just handed to them, and a lot of our opportunities were stomped out just by our not sticking to our plan of what’s worked.”The Capitals, in the conference finals for the first time in the Ovechkin era, said they can’t afford a drop-off in performance.Beating two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh gave them momentum heading into the series.Coach Barry Trotz, mindful that Tampa Bay lost Game 1 of its second-round series 6-2 to Boston only to strom back and win four straight games, reiterated it won’t be easy to build off the Caps’ success in the opener.”You get a little bit of confidence, obviously,” Trotz said at the team hotel Saturday. ”At the same time we’ve got to realize Tampa Bay is going to have some desperation in their game. And, we better have some desperation in our game.”Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tampa Bay’s All-Star goaltender, yielded four goals on 25 shots in two periods after entering the series with an 8-2 record Ryan O'Reilly Jersey Womens , 2.20 goals-against average and .927 save percentage through two rounds.The Lightning are confident they’ll play better in front of him in Game 2. The Caps expect the goaltender to bounce back, too.”One thing you got to remember, this is not the NCAA basketball tournament, it’s not one and done,” Cooper said. ”It’s the best of seven, so you get a chance to make some adjustments to improve your game and really get a look at the other team. … It’s hard to play flawless hockey all the way through.”The Caps don’t expect the Lightning to panic, either.”Obviously, it doesn’t matter what we did in Game 1 when it comes to Game 2,” Beagle said.”I would imagine there will be a really good push back from a really good hockey team. We’re going to have to stay focused, not get ahead of ourselves,” Oshie concluded. ”I can’t imagine we’re going to see the same Tampa team we saw in the first period the rest of this series.”— The road back to the Stanley Cup Final took two very different turns for the Penguins and Predators at the start of the second round.Back-to-back defending champion Pittsburgh roared back from a two-goal, third-period deficit to beat the Washington Capitals, while the Winnipeg Jets chased Nashville goaltender Pekka Rinne in a convincing 4-1 victory in Game 1. As each team prepares for Game 2 Adam Cracknell Jersey Womens , two key pieces could be ready to help.Penguins center Evgeni Malkin practiced Saturday and is on the verge of returning to the lineup after missing the past two games with an apparent leg injury. Coach Mike Sullivan called Malkin a game-time decision, though signs are pointing to the Russian star playing Sunday at Washington (3 p.m. EDT, NBC).”If I’m playing, I’m ready to play,” Malkin said. ”If you play, you need to show you can, you show you’re 100 percent. It’s not like the regular season. You can’t play slow the first period and be better in third. If I play, if I’m ready, I’m ready first shift.”Predators winger Auston Watson skated just seven first-period shifts Friday night before leaving with an undisclosed injury. His teammates outshot the Jets 48-19 and still lost, though a healthy Watson for Game 2 back in Music City (7 p.m., NBCSN) could make a difference as the defending Western Conference champions try to even the series between the NHL’s top two teams.”Getting this squared up before we go to Winnipeg is definitely important,” said Watson, who felt great and called it a good practice. ”We’ll do our best to take care of business.”The Penguins and Predators each took care of business in six games in the first round. Malkin had three goals and two assists in five games before being injured against Philadelphia Josh Jooris Jersey Womens , and the line of Colton Sissons, former Pittsburgh center Nick Bonino and Watson combined for 19 points in beating Colorado.It’s impossible to overstate Malkin’s value to the Penguins. Top-line winger Jake Guentzel called Malkin’s potential return a ”game-changer,” restoring one of their most dangerous options on the power play and at even strength after a season in which the 31-year-old forward put up 98 points.Malkin skated on the fourth line between rookie Zack Aston-Reese and Tom Kuhnhackl at practice and on the first power-play unit. If he plays, it wouldn’t be in a limited role.”Putting Geno on the fourth line? Probably not,” Sullivan said. ”We’ll try to put him in a position where he can play to his strengths, be successful as an individual and help our team win.”Just as the Penguins drew on two long playoff runs to come back against the Capitals, the Predators need only look up at their Western Conference champions banner in the rafters as they try to rebound.”We just have to keep having that bounce-back mentality we’ve had since I’ve been here for two and a half years,” center Ryan Johansen said. ”We’re looking forward to tomorrow night’s game because we know we’re going to get a great response from everybody in here.”A FOR DISCIPLINEReferees combined to call three penalties each in Game 1 of Penguins-Capitals and Jets-Predators. Nashville was the most-penalized team in the league during the regular season but hasn’t taken one its past two games.”We’re trying to get better in a lot of different areas,” coach Peter Laviolette said. ”And you hope that through the course of fixing some things, continuing to do things right that you like, fixing some things, staying out of the penalty box, whatever it may be that at the end of the night you’ll be able to move forward from that. There are some things that I guess are going in the right direction.”The strength of the Washington and Pittsburgh power plays has those teams watching themselves and trying to avoid time in the sin bin.”I think both teams go into the series trying to be disciplined for that reason Tyler Ennis Jersey Womens ,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said. ”You don’t want to give the power plays an opportunity to have an impact in the game.HELLEBUYCK SHINESConnor Hellebuyck, a Vezina Trophy finalist as the NHL’s top goaltender, starred for the Jets in making 47 saves in Game 1. In a breakout year for the 24-year-old, it was the kind of game that showed Winnipeg it has someone ready to take on the best in the West.”There’s great difficulty in a lot of the saves and finding the puck in those scrums, but he’s built for that,” coach Paul Maurice said. ”He’s a big man that moves well and tracks well in traffic – especially close traffic. So he’s capable of that kind of game in that kind of environment.”—AP Sports Writer Teresa M. Walker in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed.—
