TAMPA Authentic Todd Gurley Jersey , Fla. (AP) Alex Ovechkin lifted the Prince of Wales Trophy, spun around and set it back down on a table.The rest of the Capitals joined him for a team photo after beating the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-0 on Wednesday night in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final, a victory that sent Washington to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 20 years.A decade of playoff frustration is fading fast.”I think Ovie has been on a mission,” Capitals coach Barry Trotz said. ”They wanted this game, no question.”Ovechkin scored early and Andre Burakovsky added two second-period goals as the Caps continued to shed a label as postseason underachievers.Braden Holtby stopped 29 shots for his second straight shutout and the Lightning, who led the NHL in goals during the regular season, failed to score in the last 159 minutes, 27 seconds of the series – a stretch of nearly eight periods.Ovechkin, who had never advanced beyond the second round, scored 1:02 into the winner-take-all showdown he had described as probably the ”biggest game in my life.””The first goal was very important,” Ovechkin said. ”After that you could see we have all the momentum on our side. Holts was unstoppable today. He was special. Everybody was all in. Everybody was sacrificing their bodies. I think we all deserve the win.”To earn a spot in the Stanley Cup Final, where they’ll play the Vegas Golden Knights, the Capitals beat the top-seeded Lightning three times on the road, improving to 8-2 away from home this postseason.It’s Washington’s first Cup Final appearance since 1998, and the first during Ovechkin’s 13-year career.”We played a great game,” defenseman John Carlson said. ”We deserved to win this.”Two games after being a healthy scratch for Game 5 Todd Gurley Jersey Elite , Burakovsky became the 17th player to score a goal for Washington in the playoffs this year – four shy of the NHL record – when he beat Andrei Vasilevskiy on a breakaway at 8:59 of the second period.The winger, who played two games in the first round against Columbus before sitting out 10 straight with an upper-body injury, added a breakaway goal to make it 3-0 heading into the last period.Nicklas Backstrom had an empty-netter to complete the rout.”What a game. What an experience. We had a lot of guys pitching in,” winger T.J. Oshie said. ”The biggest guy of all had to be Holts. He played fantastic, back to back shutouts.”Tampa Bay, which rebounded from losing the first two games at home to win three straight for a 3-2 series lead, had plenty of chances. A couple of shots clanged off the post, Yanni Gourde was unable to get his stick on a loose puck in front on an empty net and the game gradually slipped away.Washington was the more physical team in evening the series with a bruising 3-0 victory in Game 6. They played with urgency from the start again Wednesday night and never let up.Tampa Bay’s last goal in the series came 33 seconds into the second period of Game 5, which the Lightning went on to win 3-2.”We’re here to win as team, no matter who gets the credit,” said Holtby, the fifth goalie to deliver a Game 7 shutout to clinch a spot in the Stanley Cup Final.”I felt we could have won every game,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. ”We ran into a tough Washington team that was probably feeling the same thing, and once you get this far you’ve probably done some magical things on the way.”It was the 33rd time in league history that a Game 7 was required to determine a Stanley Cup finalist. Home teams are 21-12 in those games.Tampa Bay also played Game 7 in the Eastern Conference final in 2015, when they blanked the New York Rangers, and again two years ago http://www.losangelesramsteamonline.com/todd-gurley-ii-jersey , when they lost 2-1 to Pittsburgh.Both of those deciding games were on the road. The Lightning had never lost a Game 7 at home before Wednesday night.”It’s going to take a few days to digest this. It’s tough to sit here right now and think of positive things and how it was a pretty great season,” Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. ”It doesn’t seem that way when you have this group – and we’ve been to this position before – and you can’t find a way to give yourself a chance a win. We thought we had that group. It’s just an empty feeling right now.”Notes: Ovechkin and Backstrom made their 11th career Game 7 appearance, one shy of Boston’s Zdeno Chara for the most among active NHL players. In addition to Chara, only five other players in NHL history have appeared in more Game 7s: Patrick Roy (13), Scott Stevens (13), Glenn Anderson (12), Ken Daneyko (12) and Stephane Yelle (12). … Evgeny Kuznetsov’s assist on Ovechkin’s early goal extended his points streak to 10 games. … Vasilevskiy made 19 saves. The Lightning outshot the Capitals (29-23) for the first time in the series.— DALLAS (AP) The Dallas Stars are celebrating 25 years in Texas by hosting the NHL draft for the first time.The headliner for the home team had a little anniversary of his own: retired franchise icon Mike Modano marking 30 years since he was the No. 1 overall pick by helping introduce the Stars’ first-round pick, Canadian forward Ty Dellandrea, on Friday night.Sharing the stage with high-scoring Dallas winger Jamie Benn, Modano only had to look up to see his No. 9 hanging from the rafters at the other end of American Airlines Center.The highest-scoring U.S.-born player in NHL history was the first pick by the Minnesota North Stars in 1988, five years before the franchise moved to North Texas.”I’ve been thinking about it,” Modano said. ”Didn’t really ring a bell till about a month ago when they started saying some stuff, called me to do some intros. I was like, `Dang, yeah, ’88 Authentic Cooper Kupp Jersey , 2018.’ I was like, `That was quick.”’Modano watched hockey grow from almost nothing in North Texas, but couldn’t say he was surprised his old franchise got the draft since a new arena that opened in 2001 brought the All-Star game six years later. The 48-year-old figured it was just a matter of time.”I think a lot of things happened along the way that we didn’t think,” Modano said. ”Just kind of gives people a little bit of knowledge of the town. There’s hockey down in Texas and it’s alive and kicking. Brings a lot of attention to this town for hockey for a good week.”Modano gigged the current captain of the Stars during their presentation, saying he wasn’t on stage when Benn got drafted and Benn responding that they didn’t bring fifth-round picks to the stage.Benn, the 2015 Art Ross Trophy winner as the NHL’s points leader, is up to fifth on the club’s career scoring list after getting taken 129th overall in 2007. Benn’s rookie season was Modano’s last in Dallas.”We worked on that for a little bit,” Modano said with a smile.Dellandrea, the 13th overall pick, was 10 when Modano retired in 2011 after one season with Detroit. Modano debuted as an 18-year-old with the North Stars and spent 20 seasons combined in Minnesota and Dallas. His American records are 557 goals and 1,359 points.”I might have been a little young,” said the 17-year-old Dellandrea, who spent the past two seasons with Flint of the Ontario Hockey League. ”But both of them have been tremendous role models to look up to as a young hockey player.”Now one of them is a teammate.—