TAMPA Victor Mete Jersey , Fla. (AP) The Tampa Bay Lightning stormed back in the Eastern Conference final against the Washington Capitals, thanks in part to a thriving power play and suddenly reliable penalty-killing unit.To regain control of the best-of-seven matchup that continues Saturday night, the Caps need a lift from their special teams, too.”The series is tied 2-2,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. ”It doesn’t matter how you got there.”Tampa Bay, which has taken two straight in a series in which the home team has yet to win, believes it hasn’t played its best.Washington was dominant in winning twice on the road, then sputtered – particularly on the Alex Ovechkin-led power play – while dropping the next two games at home.”I think we look at it realistically,” Capitals coach Barry Trotz said. ”I mean, I said to everybody in September, even yesterday, and they’re saying the same thing: Sign me up. Best-of-three, got a chance to maybe go to the Stanley Cup Final, sign me up.”I don’t think anybody thought the series would go four straight or anything like that. There’s two really high-quality teams that are going to go nose-to-nose,” Trotz added. ”There’s twists and turns in the road sometimes. … It’s just another layer of adversity. This group has taken on any adversity that has been thrown its way all year.”Since yielding three power-play goals in the first two games of the series, two of them in the closing seconds of a period, the Lightning have gone 7-for-7 killing penalties over the past two games.Not bad for a team that had one of the most potent power plays (third, 23.9 percent) in the NHL during the regular season, while also ranking among the league’s worst at killing penalties (28th, 76.1 percent).Lightning captain Steven Stamkos has a power-play goal in each of the first four games of the conference final.Six of his seven goals this postseason have come in man-advantage situations, including his franchise-best 11th career playoff power-play goal (snapping a tie with Martin St. Louis) in Game 4 on Thursday night.”Desperation. Realizing how important it is, especially in this series against the group that they have,” Stamkos said of the improved play on the penalty kill.”It starts with the goaltending, and then it starts with guys willing to sacrifice. I think it’s been a challenge,” Stamkos added. ”When the power play is going well like we are, the PK wants to step up and be just as good, and vice versa when it’s the other way. … It’s been a lot of fun to watch.”Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 36 of 38 shots in Game 4. He has bounced back nicely since allowing 10 goals over five periods in the first two games.Center Nicklas Backstrom Colton Sissons Jersey , who returned to Washington’s lineup Thursday night after missing four games with a hand injury, thinks the Capitals need to create more traffic in front of the Lightning goaltender.”He’s actually too good of a goalie if you’re going to shoot from outside with no traffic, so maybe we can get some more traffic and find these rebounds like we did the first couple of games,” Backstrom said.”We have pretty good chances. We just don’t execute,” Ovechkin said after the Washington power play was shut out for the second straight game. ”We tried. … We had so (many) shots, and we just didn’t score one more goal.”But just as Tampa Bay embraced the challenge of battling its way back into the series after losing Games 1 and 2, the Capitals are excited about the opportunity ahead, beginning Saturday night.Not only is Washington is 7-1 on the road this postseason, but the Caps went on eliminate Columbus in the first round and Pittsburgh in the conference semifinal in six games after those series were each tied at 2.”I think we’ve played three out of the four games pretty well,” Trotz said. ”I’m not disappointed at all.”The Lightning are confident, too.”Clearly home-ice advantage has been a disadvantage in this series,” Cooper said. ”Now, in saying that, I’d rather have Game 5 at home. I believe we’ll be a different team here than we showed up in Game 1 and 2.”— Liz Knox didn’t get a chance to rest.A day after making 24 saves to backstop her team to a road win and then flying home from Boston, the goaltender for the Markham Thunder worked her day job as a carpenter from 6 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon, took a 10-minute nap, went for a four-mile run and squeezed in a workout before dinner.”If we were making a living wage, it’s not a big deal because I can sleep in today and go to the gym when I’m ready and have the facilities there to train,” Knox said. ”If it’s your full-time job, then that’s your full-time job and you can pay for your rent and everything else on top of that.”For now, playing women’s hockey professionally in North America isn’t lucrative enough to be a full-time job, save for the U.S. and Canadian Olympians who earn money from their national federations. In the aftermath of the U.S. winning gold at the Winter Games, several players have used their platform on a whirlwind victory tour to make the case for one professional league where there are currently two competitors: the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and National Women’s Hockey League.”I don’t play in the CWHL or the NWHL so I have no personal preference,” U.S. shootout hero Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson said. ”For women’s hockey to continue its traction is to have one league, whether that’s a merger or an entirely new league that supports both the U.S. and Canada in one league, I think is going to be really important in the next season to somehow make that happen.”Current and former players have taken to social media to promote the concept of (hash)OneLeague that could pay long-term dividends for the sport. It’s a complicated issue muddled in the uncertainty between the CWHL, NWHL and NHL with Adam Henrique Jersey , so far, no obvious path forward.The compelling journey of the U.S. team from its fight for a better contract from USA Hockey to its thrilling victory against Canada at the Olympics brought positive attention to women’s hockey that is now in danger of being cut short.”After the Olympics, all the conversation was: `Why can’t I watch this on a day-to-day basis? Why can’t I watch this every weekend?’ Well, you can’t because the talent is split right now between two leagues,” said Knox, one of the co-chairs of the CWHL Players Association. ”Merging is probably never going to work. There’s just too many differences between the two leagues and that’s been evident from the very beginning.”The CWHL , now in its 11th season, has seven teams split between the U.S., Canada and China. The NWHL began in 2015 and has four U.S.-based teams.What also divides the two are salary and bonus structures.The NWHL has paid its players a salary from its inception: Between $10,000 and $26,000 in its first season to between $5,000 and $7,000 now. The CWHL previously focused on paying staff and player travel costs before committing to paying players starting this past year – anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000, with a team salary cap of $100,000.”Our framework has allowed for us to maintain sustainability and measured growth, and that trend will continue,” said Brenda Andress, commissioner of the nonprofit CWHL, which has partnered with NHL teams in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary. Partnerships can include financial assistance, marketing and promotions, ice time and office space.The NHWL is on better financial footing than it was last season, when the league was forced to cut player salaries in half to avoid the risk of folding. It now has an affiliation with the New Jersey Devils for financial and other support, and Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula purchased the Buffalo Beauts to make them the first team not owned and managed by the league.”Team USA’s thrilling victory over Canada for the gold medal captivated the nation and showed a glimpse of the potential for women’s hockey in our country,” a Pegula Sports & Entertainment spokesman said. ”We believe that women’s hockey has an extremely bright future and are heavily committed to doing our part to continue its advancement.”Neither league would address any notion of specific merger talks.”One of the founding principles of the NWHL is to advance women’s hockey Womens Andrew Cogliano Jersey ,” NWHL Commissioner Dani Rylan said. ”If anyone has a formal plan or ever wants to discuss how we can take the business of professional women’s hockey to the next level, the NWHL will always engage with them and do what’s best for the game, the players, our supporters and fans.”Knox and others would love for the NHL to step in and run a league like the NBA has with the WNBA.NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s stance on women’s pro hockey hasn’t changed since the NWHL was established. It’s a position he recently reiterated on Calgary’s 960-Radio by saying the two leagues must first sort out their situations.”Having two leagues makes it more difficult for us to get involved,” Bettman said. ”If there were no leagues, we’d probably start one under the NHL umbrella, and I’ve told both leagues that. But I have no interest in competing with the existing leagues. I think that would be counterproductive.”Andress said the CWHL has always believed in the need for one league called it ”where the future of the women’s professional game has always been heading.”No one’s quite sure what that would look like.”Your guess is as good as mine,” said U.S. captain Meghan Duggan, who has played in the CWHL and NWHL. ”It would be awesome if we could work together and if they could work together and figure out a way to get everyone playing under the same umbrella.”U.S. forward Hilary Knight, who is back in the CWHL playing for Les Canadiennes in Montreal after two seasons with the NWHL’s Boston Pride, said whatever it looks like, it’s vital for the growth of the game to have a single league that pays a living wage.”If I have a child and I’m going to sign them up, if they were to take this seriously, what’s the career path? If they fall in love with the game, what career path are they going to have?” said Knight, who signed with Montreal last week. ”Is there going to be a place for them to play after college if they’re not going to be in the national team program or whatnot?”Right now, those are unanswered questions. Even though Knox is Canadian, she can’t help but be happy that the Olympic championship won by the Americans has put the one-league conundrum in the spotlight.”That’s the biggest voice that we have right now in North America,” Knox said. ”The stuff that they’re doing right now and helping to promote the idea that we could all play in one league is really, really important for the growth of women’s hockey here in North America.”It’s an effort borne out of frustration for players who want nothing more than to play with and against each other in the same league instead of being forced to choose. They know fans also have to split their attention, which isn’t necessarily a sustainable way to build the popularity of women’s hockey.”A lot of people only discover women’s hockey every four years at the Olympics,” Knight said. ”We’re here every single year, every single day training and there’s places that you can come see us, but we just don’t have those marketing dollars, those resources behind us to really bridge the gap between a product and the consumer. Hopefully combining efforts would help take care of that and we can get some big names on board to help fix that problem.”