Win gives Lightning home ice in first round

WASHINGTON – The Tampa Bay Lightning's regular-season finale has taken on significant importance.

To secure home-ice advantage for their Eastern Conference First Round series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Montreal Canadiens, the Lightning must defeat the Washington Capitals on Sunday at Verizon Center.

Tampa Bay, which is making its second Stanley Cup Playoff appearance in seven years, has not had home-ice advantage in a series since winning the Stanley Cup in 2004.

"We'd love to have home ice," Lightning defenseman Eric Brewer told reporters. "Clearly it's something that you never want to use, but you'd love to have. The other thing is you just want to play well going into the playoffs."

To do so, the Lightning might have to overcome an injury-ravaged lineup. Forward Valtteri Filppula, and defensemen Sami Salo and Victor Hedman, are all questionable.

Forward Ryan Malone's status for the postseason is uncertain after he was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and cocaine possession early Saturday morning.

As for the Capitals, their season comes to an end Sunday after missing the playoffs for the first time since 2007. A win would give the Capitals their longest winning streak of the season at five games, but they take little solace in that knowing that they failed to reach their goals.

"When you lose in a Game 7 usually you can tell yourself you went out swinging," defenseman Karl Alzner said. "You're in the playoffs. You had a chance to win the Cup. When you don't put yourself in [the playoffs]…one's more of a crushing one and one is more of an embarrassing one."

Here are the projected lineups for the Lightning and Capitals:

LIGHTNING

Ondrej Palat – Tyler Johnson – Steven Stamkos

Ryan Callahan – Tom Pyatt – Alex Killorn

J.T. Brown – Cedric Paquette – Nikita Kucherov

Richard Panik – Nate Thompson – B.J. Crombeen

Matt Carle – Radko Gudas

Eric Brewer – Andrej Sustr

Mark Barberio – Michael Kostka

Anders Lindback

Kristers Gudlevskis

Scratched: Ryan Malone (arrest), Cody Kunyk, Keith Aulie

Injured: Valtteri Filppula (lower body), Teddy Purcell (illness), Sami Salo (upper body), Victor Hedman (lower body), Ben Bishop (upper body)

CAPITALS

Mikhail Grabovski – Nicklas Backstrom – Alex Ovechkin

Dustin Penner – Evgeny Kuznetsov – Troy Brouwer

Jason Chimera – Eric Fehr – Joel Ward

Peter LeBlanc – Jay Beagle – Tom Wilson

Karl Alzner – John Carlson

Dmitry Orlov – Tyson Strachan

Julien Brouillette – Connor Carrick

Braden Holtby

Jaroslav Halak

Scratched: Aaron Volpatti, John Erskine

Injured: Brooks Laich (groin), Marcus Johansson (upper body), Mike Green (upper body), Jack Hillen (upper body), Patrick Wey (upper body)