Bruins will host Caps in playoffs

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Bruins to face Capitals in playoffs

Joe Haggerty warns of a Washington team that could turn it on once this playoff series starts

BOSTON -- It seemed that the Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators were on a collision course to meet in the first round of the playoffs, but that won’t be happening.

Instead it will be Alex Ovechkin, Alex Semin and, yes, even Dennis Wideman invading Boston with the Washington Capitals as the Sens dropped three in a row while dropping all the way to the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference. The Bruins will host the Caps in Game 1 of the series Thursday night at TD Garden, but the B’s had to wait a solid two plus hours to finally learn their fates.

Either way it didn’t matter to the Black and Gold, who said it was more about themselves than whichever team they were playing. One could make the argument that Ottawa turned down the intensity over the last week to step into a better matchup for them against the top-seeded Rangers after it seemed they were on track to play the Bruins since the middle of the season.

But Claude Julien gave that theory a flying elbow off the turnbuckle that Macho Man Randy Savage would have been proud of.

“That’s the feel that there should be in the dressing room. Anybody who decides who they want as an opponent, whether it’s, you know, saying, ‘Oh, I’d rather play this team than that team,’ or plays to pick their own opponents…they don’t deserve to win. That’s the way -- this is a game. This is not wrestling, it’s not a fake sport,” said Claude Julien. “You don’t go out there and pretend to play and make sure you lose because you want a certain team to play against. Karma’s a pretty powerful thing, and I believe in doing the things right.

“If we’re going to win, we’re going to have to beat every team that comes in our way, and that’s the way we’ve approached it.”