The first two teams who locked in their NHL second-round pairing earlier this week finally know when they’ll begin their best of seven series.
The Carolina Hurricanes and Washington Capitals will play Tuesday, May 6 in Game 1 at Washington’s Capital One Arena and shown on ESPN, the NHL announced late Friday night. Times and dates for the complete second-round schedule in the Stanley Cup playoffs have not been released.
Game 2 will also be at Capital One Arena before the series moves to Raleigh.
The Capitals own home-ice advantage for the series based on their better regular season finish. The Capitals won the Metropolitan Division while the Hurricanes finished second. So the first two games of the series will be in Washington, followed by two games on Carolina’s home ice at Lenovo Center.
Carolina was the first team to advance out of the first round, beating the New Jersey Devils, 5-4 in double overtime, on Tuesday night at Lenovo Center to win that series, 4-1, and eliminate the Devils. Washington followed suit on Wednesday night, closing out a 4-1 series win over the Montreal Canadiens with a 4-1 win in Game 5 in Washington.
The Hurricanes closed out their first-round series with uncertainty in goal after Frederik Andersen was injured when New Jersey’s Timo Meier in game 4 at New Jersey last Sunday. Pyotr Kochetkov finished off the game 4 win and was in goal for the game 5 clincher.
But Andersen returned to the ice for practice with the Hurricanes on Friday as they prepared for Washington.
The Washington-Carolina winner will advance to the Eastern Conference Finals to play the winner of the Toronto-Florida series. Toronto and Florida play game 1 of their second-round series on Monday.