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WASHINGTON (AP) Facing elimination at home Brandon Saad Jersey , the Washington Capitals looked determined to hit everything that moved in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference final.The goal was to finish checks on Tampa Bay Lightning players as much as possible, though at one point Devante Smith-Pelly decked Dan Girardi and took teammate Jay Beagle down with him.”I apologized to him,” Smith-Pelly said. ”I said sorry. He didn’t seem to care.”Sorry, not sorry.The Capitals made no apologies for taking the body and grinding out a physical 3-0 victory Monday night that tied the playoff series and set up a deciding Game 7. T.J. Oshie had a goal on the power play and into an empty net, Smith-Pelly scored a back-breaker and Braden Holtby stopped all 24 shots, but it was the bruising style that kept the Capitals alive and could still pay more dividends.”You’ve got to wear them down,” Smith-Pelly said. ”Every game, if guys are going to be playing 25, 30 minutes, it’s tough when you’re getting hit every single shift. We’ve been on the body all game and all series. If it shows up in Game 7 where guys are starting to get tired, then it was all worth it.”Game 7 is Wednesday night at Tampa Bay. The winner faces the Vegas Golden Knights, who are in the Stanley Cup Final in their first season.Alex Ovechkin, Tom Wilson and Brooks Orpik led the charge in the grueling Game 6, throwing their bodies around all night like human wrecking balls. Orpik separated Cedric Paquette from the puck twice on one shift, Ovechkin leveled rookie Yanni Gourde and Wilson was his usual self Brent Seabrook Jersey Kids , dishing out a handful of crushing body checks.The Capitals outhit the Lightning 39-19 and outshot them 34-24, bruising and battering them all over the ice.”It’s desperation, really,” Orpik said. ”You try to empty the tank as much as you can. That’s probably one area where we have an edge is the size and physical play.”That edge was noticeable in Game 6 when Washington fired up an already-raucous crowd well before Oshie’s power-play goal 15:12 into the second period. While Tampa Bay goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy was again on top of his game in stopping 31 of 33 shots, Orpik said the Capitals wanted to give back to fans for their energy and did so by laying out Lightning players.From Wilson’s big hit on Paquette on his first shift through the time Smith-Pelly scored with 9:58 left, the physical play took a toll on the Lightning, who didn’t have the energy left to muster a late comeback. Tampa Bay captain Steven Stamkos said simply the Capitals ”executed their game plan” and the Lightning didn’t respond.”They played with that desperate hockey and we should have matched it and we didn’t,” winger Ryan Callahan said. ”They played like their lives were on the line, and we played like we had another chance and that’s unfortunate, but we’ve got to change the script now in Game 7.”Tampa Bay had no answer for the physicality with a hit disparity coach Jon Cooper chalked up as, ”Somebody was engaged and somebody wasn’t.” The Lightning also couldn’t solve Holtby, who was at his best on a handful of deflection attempts to record his first shutout of these playoffs.”I was just trying to stay in the moment, focus on one puck at a time,” Holtby said. ”I try and stay the same level through the game.”The Lightning missed a chance to close out an opponent for the first time in these playoffs. They eliminated New Jersey and Boston in five games apiece but are now on the brink themselves.The Capitals improved to 10-2 in the Ovechkin/Nicklas Backstrom era when facing elimination any time before Game 7. They’re 3-7 in Game 7 over that time but will obviously take their chances after grinding their way back to 3-3 in the series.”I think it’s great that we’re close,” Oshie said. ”I think both teams for the most part figured out what works against the other team. It’s just a matter of who’s going to play longer Youth Corey Crawford Jersey , harder and do more of it.”NOTES: Washington improved to 4-5 at home in the playoffs. The Lightning dropped to 5-2 on the road. … An assist on Oshie’s first goal extended Capitals C Evgeny Kuznetsov’s point streak to nine games, tied with Backstrom in 2009 for the longest in franchise playoff history. … F Andre Burakovsky returned to the Capitals lineup after being a healthy scratch for Game 5, replacing Alex Chiasson.— ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) Next season’s defending champion Washington Capitals will look a lot like the group that won the Stanley Cup last month.They re-signed defensemen John Carlson and Michal Kempny and forward Devante Smith-Pelly and have so far only lost fourth-line center Jay Beagle and backup goaltender Philipp Grubauer from their title-winning roster.Yet the few changes could be substantial for the Capitals, most notably new coach Todd Reirden taking over for Barry Trotz with a roster that is so similar that the expectation will be another deep playoff run.”There’s going to be many things that stay the same, but there’s gonna be some things that I think I have to be cognizant of,” Reirden said as he was introduced Tuesday. ”I want to create an environment where players are going to continue to be challenged with new ideas and new ways to improve their games.”Based on the continuity of promoting a four-year assistant, general manager Brian MacLellan and Reirden expect this to be a ”seamless transition.” Set aside the awkward circumstances of Trotz’s departure and the Capitals had been grooming Reirden for a head coaching job somewhere in the NHL for some time now.Reirden was the finalist for Calgary’s job two years ago and in retrospect is glad that didn’t work out. His first NHL head coaching job happens to be this one, as just the fourth coach in the past 30 years to assume control of a Cup champion.With the vast majority of the roster back, Alex Ovechkin coming off a playoff MVP performance and almost the entire defense he helped develop back to try to repeat, the pressure is on.”Todd’s at that point in his career where he’s earned a head coaching job,” MacLellan said. ”He’s put in all the work. He’s got all the experience. It’s just a matter of seeing him take control. I have all the faith in the world that he can accomplish it. He’s just ready to do it right now.”Beagle signed a four-year, $12 million contract with the Canucks, and the Capitals traded Grubauer and defenseman Brooks Orpik to the Avalanche to clear the cap space they needed to ink Carlson to a $64 million, eight-year deal. Orpik could still return after Colorado bought him out and made him a free agent Duncan Keith Jersey , which could mean 18 of 19 players who skated in the Cup-winning Game 5 against Vegas are on the roster to begin next season.”It’s one of those offseasons where you’re not trying to make a change because you like what you have culturally,” MacLellan said. ”This group really seems to like playing together and there’s a good chemistry there, so I think it was our decision to try to (keep) as much as we could.”That did not extend to Trotz, who wanted to be paid closer to market value for a Cup-winning coach than the automatic extension that kicked in with a small raise from his previous salary. MacLellan believes Reirden can build on what Trotz started, and the 47-year-old new Capitals coach is confident in his abilities because of how much responsibility he had the past two seasons as associate coach.”We all had input in it in what our decisions were made,” Reirden said. ”I feel strongly about the direction of our team and the style that we played during the year that it wasn’t necessarily just one person’s idea, but it was our whole staff that had large input into how our team was going to play.”The Capitals will need one assistant coach to replace Trotz choice Lane Lambert, but will keep the rest of the staff intact. They’ll look to Travis Boyd or recently signed Nic Dowd to replace Beagle. And if they can’t bring back Orpik, they’ll likely find a veteran defenseman to play on the third pair.That’s about all that’s different when the Stanley Cup banner is raised to the rafters Oct. 3, which is no accident.”We’re always looking to improve certain areas,” MacLellan said. ”We always look at, `We’ve got a hole here. We need to fix that.’ Or, `This is a way we can get to that next level.’ We’ve always had that type of attitude. This year, it’s trying to maintain what we had.”—