have shown some signs of wear and tear. The team’s leading goal scorer, Alex DeBrincat, is 20.”Joel’s done a very good job with the young

BRANDON Adidas Conor Timmins Jersey , 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, 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 Adidas Ian Cole Jersey ,” 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, 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 Adidas Philipp Grubauer Jersey , 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.”— CHICAGO (AP) The Chicago Blackhawks are not making changes behind the bench after missing the playoffs for the first time in a decade.Team President John McDonough told reporters Thursday that he plans to bring back both coach Joel Quenneville and general manager Stan Bowman after a dismal season for a team that has won three Stanley Cup championships since 2010 but stumbled to a last-place finish in the Central Division this season.”I believe in continuity, they’ve had an incredible body of success,” McDonough told reporters. ”We’re not tethered to the past. This has been a very disappointing year and our expectations are incredibly high. We’re not going to deviate from those expectations. But I believe both Stan and Joel are the guys that are going to bring this back.”Chicago had reached the playoffs every year since Quenneville took over four games into the 2008-09 season, winning it all in 2010, 2013 and 2015. But the Blackhawks lost in the first round each of the past two years and this year was a nightmare.Corey Crawford’s upper-body injury in December eventually sidelined the two-time All-Star goaltender for the season, and there was inconsistent play from some of the team’s aging stars and young defensemen.Still Adidas Cale Makar Jersey , Chicago has a highly regarded support system and the team has plenty of talent, including star forward Patrick Kane. The Blackhawks have started a youth movement as veterans like Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook have shown some signs of wear and tear. The team’s leading goal scorer, Alex DeBrincat, is 20.”Joel’s done a very good job with the young players,” McDonough told reporters. ”And I think it’s inspiring to see that there are a lot of good young players on the way. I know at one point, that was kind of a knock on Joel, that he wasn’t proficient at coaching young players. Nothing could be further from the truth.”The 59-year-old Quenneville, a former NHL defenseman and the NHL’s second-winningest coach in history, received a three-year contract extension in January 2016 that runs through the 2019-20 season. He and Bowman will now get a chance to turn things around.”There were a lot of circumstances that happened this year that were out of our control,” McDonough said. ”And I’m not assessing blame, but I believe in both of them. I want both of them to succeed and I think we’re going to be headed in the right direction, after a lot of reflection and assessment.”—