POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Bolts 3, Caps 2 (SO)

Times Are Strange - Playoff hockey in August? It's happening. Three-on-three overtime and the shootout? Yes, those are happening as well, at least in the round robin contests in the NHL's return to play. The Caps and the Tampa Bay Lightning made history on Monday afternoon, engaging in the first ever NHL postseason game to be decided in a shootout. The Lightning prevailed 3-2 in the skills competition.

Monday's game was the first of three round-robin games for each team, and although it took the participants some time to warm to the task, by game's end this one had the tenor of a playoff tilt.

Had this been an actual playoff game with actual playoff implications - the implication of each loss moving a team closer to its demise - maybe the Caps would have suited up defenseman John Carlson, and the Lightning might have sweatered Steven Stamkos. But the feel of the round-robin games isn't the same as that of the frenetic, best-of-five play-in series we've witnessed from the teams outside of the round robin bubble within a bubble.

With nothing more than seeding for the Stanley Cup playoffs on the line, it didn't make sense to risk the health of the ailing Carlson or Stamkos, so they sat this one out.

As Monday's game between the Caps and Lightning wore on, though, temperatures started to rise and the surliness level climbed. The two sides combined for 89 hits, and Washington's T.J. Oshie and Tampa Bay's Yanni Gourde dropped the mitts for a spirited scrap late in the second period.

Washington fell into a 2-0 hole on goals from Nikita Kucherov and Mitchell Stephens, and the Caps rallied to tie the game on a couple of second-chance goals from Richard Panik and Evgeny Kuznetsov late in the middle frame.

"We started to create some momentum in probably the second half of the second," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "And then we took it to a different level after T.J.'s fight inspired our group, and then we just built on that."

The two sides traded chances in the third and overtime, both goaltenders were strong, and what turned into a pretty good hockey game suffered an ignominious end in the shootout, when Kucherov scored to give the Lightning the extra point in the round robin standings.

After it was over, Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper summed it up nicely.

"It was two teams that wanted to win a game," said Cooper, "and two teams that have played each other in the past, and two teams that consider themselves upper echelon teams in our conference. We feel that way, Washington feels that way. When it comes down to it, and you've got proud hockey players like that, you're going to try and win the game and that's what they did. But we have more in us, and they have more in them. If that was an actual playoff game, I think the intensity would have been amped up much more than you saw today. And I think it was high today."

One of the fun and underrated elements of round robin play is the underlying sense that these games could be a preview of potential later round match-ups. If the Caps and Lightning run into one another again in a best-of-seven playoff set in the upcoming weeks, it will make for compelling viewing, given the star power on both sides and the entertaining series the two teams delivered just over two years ago in the Eastern Conference Final.

When The Spell Is Broken - Caps goaltender Braden Holtby entered Monday's game with a lengthy postseason shutout spell over the Lightning. Back in May of 2018, Holtby authored a pair of consecutive shutouts in Games 6 and 7 of the Eastern Conference Final series, erasing what had been a 3-2 Tampa Bay lead in the series and propelling the Caps into the Stanley Cup Final, where they vanquished Vegas in five games.

Dating back to a Ryan Callahan goal early in the second period of Game 5 of that series, Holtby brought in a string of 60 straight postseason saves against the Lightning, covering a span of 159 minutes and 27 seconds.

When Kucherov broke the spell with the game's first goal at 12:53 of the first, it halted Holtby's streak at 68 straight shots stopped in 172 minutes and 20 seconds of postseason hockey.

Powerless - Even without Stamkos, the Lightning's power play boasts more than its fair share of dangerous players. The Lightning attack is lethal enough at even strength, and the Caps made a point of staying out of the box on Monday.

Washington was whistled for a quartet of penalties - including Oshie's fighting major - but all were of the coincidental variety, so the Caps managed to get through Monday's game without facing a single shorthanded situation.

Asked about his team not getting any power plays in what turned into such a physical affair, Cooper was philosophical.

"It's the playoffs," he shrugged. "You go into a game thinking that you might get none, and that's what happened."

By The Numbers - The Lightning nudged the Caps 45-44 on the afternoon in hits, with only seven of the game's 36 skaters - three members of the Caps and four of the Bolts - not getting credit for a bodycheck in the game … Cedric Paquette led the Lightning with seven hits while Alex Ovechkin, Garnet Hathaway and Tom Wilson had six hits each to lead the Caps … Michal Kempny, Ilya Kovalchuk, Ovechkin and Kuznetsov had three shots on net each to lead Washington, and Ovechkin's six shot attempts led the Caps … With Carlson out, Caps defenseman Dmitry Orlov led all skaters on both sides with 27:53 in ice time … Nick Jensen led the Capitals with three blocked shots … Lars Eller won eight of 10 (80%) face-offs in the game.