from Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post,

Based on their 2-1 victory over the Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night in the opening game of their Eastern Conference semifinal series, they are finally trending in the right direction. This is now a full on bona fide trend: The Caps are winning the close ones even when they don’t play great. They met a physical opponent and out-toughed them and won the mental battle, too, losing their 1-0 lead late in the final period only to rally and win on that gasp-inducing buzzer-beater by Joel Ward, a goal that sucked all the beery breath out of the Garden crowd.

“We were relentless,” Holtby said.

What was so interesting was that the Capitals didn’t start well. They had to work their way into the idea of winning this game. In fact, at first they couldn’t even find the puck. The Rangers were simply faster — at everything. Their hands were quicker, sticks were quicker. They made ice chips fly with their skating. The Rangers played as if they took Coach Alain Vigneault literally when he said of this series, “It’s a race to four. First team that gets to four wins.”

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