Very strange day indeed. Who would have predicted the Boston Bruins and Detroit Red Wings would lose and the Philadelphia Flyers would beat the Pittsburgh Penguins?

But we now know two Eastern Conference first-round matchups: the Flyers and Washington Capitals, and the Red Wings and Tampa Bay Lightning.

Both are going to be very interesting and have a lot of history behind them.

The Flyers and Caps have met four times in the NHL Playoffs.

In the 1983-84 Season the Caps swept the Flyers in a best of five. In 1987-88 The Flyers took a 3-1 lead in the series, a series in which Ron Hextall scored a goal by the way, but the Caps stormed back winning it in seven games on an overtime goal by Dale Hunter. Then the next year in 1988-89, the Flyers would take down the Caps in six games. Finally in 2007-08 the Flyers would again take a 3-1 lead, only to see the Caps again storm back and force a Game 7 in Washington, and again it would head to overtime, but this time the Flyers would stun the home crowd on a goal by Joffrey Lupul.

As for Detroit and Tampa, it was just a year ago that these teams payed a very entertaining opening round series that saw Detroit taking a 1-0 lead, then a 2-1 lead, then a 3-2 lead. That was until Tampa finally broke the trend of trading victories, winning Games 6 and 7, and then the Bolts were off to the races. The Red Wings have historically played very well against Yzerman's Bolts, as I wrote last year that the Wings were the only team with a winning record against Tampa going into the playoffs and they did prove to be the toughest opponent.

Who do you think wins these series?

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