Round 2, Game 1- Penguins @ Washington Capitals

The series everyone has been waiting for is finally here. The Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals will face off at 1:00 on Saturday afternoon to open up the best of seven set.

While Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin have dominated most of the media spotlight as the hockey world readies for the series' beginning, both the Pens and Caps have a slew of other young stars that will prove very important down the stretch. Evgeni Malkin, Alex Semin, Nicklas Backstrom, Jordan Staal, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Simeon Varlamov are a few examples.

Varlamov, who was the Capitals' backup for most of the season, took over for an incompetent Jose Theodore after the former Montreal Canadien gave up four soft goals in Game 1 against the New York Rangers.

Pittsburgh has to stay out of the penalty box. Washington has arguably the best powerplay in the game. Ovechkin, Sergei Fedorov, Semin, Green, and Backstrom offer many scoring options.

Though Varlamov played fantastically in the first round, his performance came against the offensively challenged New York Rangers. Varlamov has never faced the kind of firepower before that the Penguins are about to expose him to. In the first round, he took shots from Scott Gomez and Markus Naslund; now, he'll have to stand up to Crosby and Malkin.

Speculation is that Petr Sykora will return to the lineup for this game after being scratched for the final two games of the series against Philadelphia, but nothing is certain.

The Pens need to win one of the first two games in Washington if they're to win the series.

Penguins-

Kunitz-Crosby-Guerin
Fedotenko-Malkin-Satan
Cooke-Staal-Kennedy
Dupuis-Talbot-Adams

Orpik-Gonchar
Eaton-Letang
Gill-Scuderi

Fleury

Capitals-

Ovechkin-Fedorov-Kozlov
Fleischmann-Backstrom-Semin
Laich-Steckel-Bradley
Clark-Gordon-Fehr

Morrisson-Green
Poti-Jurcina
Erskine-Pothier

Varlamov

GO PENS!