There’s a certain reliability that’s hitched to Penguins-Capitals. Call it the comfort of the routine; watching these teams play is like slipping into a old hoodie, or eating at Chick-fil-A. It’s why so many people watched Jay Leno for so long. Reliability matters. Sometimes, it matters more than quality.
Beyond that, though, each series does manage to present variations on the theme. If the results have been metronomically similar, the routes we’ve taken to get there have been a little different. There are deviations. There are twists.
At the risk of being a prisoner of the moment — because we’re only talking about one result, the Penguins’ 3-1 win in Thursday night’s Game 4 — the Eastern Conference semifinals is in the middle of one of those swerves.