Robert Lang scored twice for Washington, and Olie Kolzig made 28 saves for his sixth career playoff shutout as the Capitals beat Tampa Bay 3-0 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals in front of a sellout crowd of 20,214. The best-of- 7 series resumes Saturday at 3 p.m. in Tampa.

While the Lightning didn't wilt under the bright lights, the pressure of playoff hockey places every little play under a microscope. Washington capitalized on two Tampa Bay mistakes and took advantage of a fluke play that turned the game's momentum.

``You look up at the score and it's 3-0 and you think, oh no, what did they do, it was a blowout, but it wasn't,'' said Lightning coach John Tortorella, who noticed some of the players appeared nervous in their first playoff game. ``There were so many little things [that] happened, but I thought we did some good things.''

After holding the Capitals to two shots in the first 15 minutes - which included killing off a Pavel Kubina penalty that resulted in no Washington shots - the air was taken out of the Lightning's sails on Washington's third shot.

At 16:01 of the first period, Mike Grier sent a pass through the slot the deflected into the air off the stick of Lightning defenseman Brad Lukowich. Lang was at the right post and was able to bat the puck out of the air and into the top corner just over the glove of Nikolai Khabibulin.

``They get a good bounce and the guy knocks it out of the air,'' defenseman Dan Boyle said. ``We kept their chances fairly low, but the key was we didn't get any pressure in the offensive zone. We didn't play Tampa Bay hockey. We spent a lot of time in their zone, but we didn't really do anything in there.''

The Capitals were effective in slowing down the Lightning's aggressive forecheck, limiting Tampa Bay's scoring chances and preventing the Lightning from recovering the puck on dump-ins. Though Tampa Bay outshot Washington 28-22, the Lightning had few quality scoring chances, and when they did, Kolzig was there.

Vinny Lecavalier, who finished with a game-high six shots, had the best chance of the night at 14:52 of the second with the Lightning trailing 1-0. Vinny Prospal fed a perfect lead pass to a streaking Lecavalier in the zone. As Lecavalier moved past Brian Sutherby, he deked Kolzig to the ice and tried to sneak a two-handed backhander under the sprawling goalie, who was able to get a skate on the puck and cover it up.

``Olie is our superstar, and in times like these you look to your stars,'' Washington center Jeff Halpern said. ``He was our best player [Thursday].''

Lang scored his second goal 3:05 after Lecavalier's missed chance when he jumped off the bench to intercept a Jassen Cullimore pass and beat Khabibulin to the short side on a 2-on-1 rush to make is 2-0.

Michael Nylander scored 1:02 into the third to cap the scoring.

``We just have to stay strong mentally, and we have to realize that we can still win the series and that's the main thing,'' Lightning captain Dave Andreychuk said. ``They still have to win three games, and we have to win four.''