WASHINGTON (AP) Nicklas Backstrom did so well on faceoffs with an injured hand he even surprised himself.”It’s the playoffs Christopher Tanev Jersey ,” Backstrom said after the Washington Capitals‘ 4-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday night that evened the Eastern Conference final at two games apiece. ”You’ve just got to grind. It felt good on the first couple faceoffs, so I just kept taking them.”Returning from a four-game absence with a right hand injury, Backstrom won six of nine faceoffs and looked more like himself as the night wore on. With Game 5 looming Saturday night at Tampa Bay, Backstrom’s improvement is one of the keys to Washington bouncing back from consecutive home losses.”I should get back to normal,” Backstrom said after playing 18:51 night in his return. ”I feel really good. I don’t know (how normal) exactly. If I didn’t feel good, I wouldn’t play. The doctors wouldn’t let me play, either.”Team doctors cleared Backstrom to play around lunchtime, and by pregame warmups he was drawing an ovation from fans thrilled to see him back in the lineup. The crowd roared when Backstrom won the faceoff on his first shift, and he got back into a rhythm centering the third line.”It was so fun to be back out there,” Backstrom said. ”It’s where everyone wants to be. You want to be on the ice. It’s just too bad we didn’t get the win.”A hard-luck loss included two penalties by fill-in No. 2 center Lars Eller, who has five in the past two games. Coach Barry Trotz didn’t mess with his top two lines, but Backstrom could easily be promoted to skate with Jakub Vrana and T.J. Oshie in Game 5.”We’re going to need him pushing forward, especially now that he has a game under him,” goaltender Braden Holtby said. ”He’ll take on more minutes and a bigger role. You could tell as the game went on he was getting more and more comfortable, so he’s going to be a much-needed asset for us in these next few games, for sure.”Backstrom appears ready to do that. The 30-year-old Swedish center hadn’t played since taking a slap shot from Pittsburgh’s Justin Schultz on May 5, but if it were up to him, he would have been back much sooner.”Nick has been champing at the bit for a while now Authentic Daniel Sedin Jersey ,” said Trotz, lauding Backstrom’s game. ”We’ve been holding him back a little bit, but he’s ready to go.”Even on a team featuring Alex Ovechkin, the Capitals have gone how Backstrom has gone for the better part of a decade. He’s the second-longest-tenured player on the team, and this was his first career game in the conference finals.”As a hockey player, you want to play,” Backstrom said. ”It feels nice to be back.”— BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) The Buffalo Bills were so dull during their lean years, comedian Nick Bakay feared his body would fuse to the couch while watching them play.”It’s an incredibly disturbing image,” Bakay said of wasting away Sundays witnessing his hometown team sleepwalk through one loss after another during a 17-season playoff drought that ended last year.”I never missed a Bills game. But I was always slumped on my couch. I was never sitting forward. I was never jumping to my feet,” said Bakay, who wrote ”Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and its sequel, and produced and appeared on the TV sitcom ”King of Queens.” ”You sit on your couch, and your couch slowly eats you.”No different for fans of Buffalo’s other pro sports franchise, the NHL’s Sabres, who finished last for the third time in five years and extended their franchise-worst playoff drought to a seventh season.In a shot-and-a-beer town where the winters are interminably long, Buffalo sports fans ride things out on the notion of renewal always being just around the corner.And there’s a new, palpable optimism for this hearty fan base Womens Derek Dorsett Jersey , thanks to a three-day stretch which showed potential to alter the trajectory of both teams.First, the Bills made a pair of splashes in the first round of the NFL draft on April 26 by trading up to select Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen and Virginia Tech linebacker Tremaine Edmunds.Two days later, the Sabres won the NHL draft lottery – something Buffalo lost the previous two times it finished last – and the opportunity to select projected No. 1 pick, Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin.During the NFL draft, CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor got dirty looks from his wife during a rare dinner date sneaking peeks at the Bills’ picks. He then yelped with excitement upon learning the Sabres won the lottery while attending the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington.”I had just resigned myself to never winning it,” Glor said. ”But listen, I always have hope.”In Buffalo, there’s a fine line between affection and affliction for hope.”I always try to keep it in check a little bit,” said Glor, who grew up in the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda.”Unfortunately, you get conditioned to where there are times you can be defeatist. And you try not to be. But you just don’t give up.”Fans have little choice but to persevere in a place where nickname-worthy moments are tied to losses.For the Bills, it’s ”Wide Right,” after kicker Scott Norwood missed a last-second field-goal attempt in a 20-19 loss to the New York Giants in the 1991 Super Bowl – the first of four consecutive Super Bowl losses.For the Sabres, it’s ”No Goal,” following a 2-1, triple-overtime loss to Dallas in Game 6 of the 1999 Stanley Cup Final. Brett Hull’s Cup-clinching goal stood even though replays showed his skate in the crease.Those were the so-called glory days.The Bills and Sabres have won five playoff games combined since 2008. By comparison, the NHL’s expansion Vegas Golden Knights have already won eight in their first year of existence.Buffalo joins Nashville, Tennessee Auston Matthews Jersey , and Charlotte, North Carolina, as the only North American markets with two or more major pro teams to not have won a title.”I think it builds character in a way. I joke with my friends that one day my kids will have to go through therapy because we are Sabres, Bills and Mets fans,” said former VH1-cable TV chief Tom Calderone, who’s from Long Island, New York, but got his broadcasting start in Buffalo and maintains a home in the city. ”It’s easy to be a Cowboys fan or a Patriots fan. But it takes true dedication to be a Bills or Sabres fan.”Calderone sees more hope reflected in signs of resurgence for the city itself.The former site of the Erie Canal has been transformed from vacant gravel lots to parkland, a water park that doubles as an ice rink in winter, and an entertainment/hockey complex built by Bills and Sabres owner Terry Pegula.Housing prices have tripled and a medical corridor is newly bustling along Main Street, where shuttered and boarded-up buildings have been renovated or replaced by new steel and glass structures.Buffalo still has its rust-belt blemishes as one of the nation’s poorest cities. Racial inequities, failing schools and a crumbling infrastructure remain issues.The Bills and Sabres aren’t immune to troubling headlines. Last week, the two teams’ president Russ Brandon resigned amid allegations of having inappropriate relationships with female employees.Buffalo might never regain the industrial-age prominence it held in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the city became a Great Lakes shipping hub as the gateway to the Erie Canal.Nor, however, should it become the punchline comedian Jon Stewart once delivered during a stop in Buffalo, calling the city the gateway to the Ontario border town of Fort Erie just across the Niagara River – population 30,000.Watching a documentary on former Bills running back O.J. Simpson Connor Brown Jersey , Bakay was reminded of the gloomy times in the 1970s when the steel mills began closing and legions of people left to find jobs.”It depressed me so much,” he said. ”Every shot of Buffalo looked like a moose that farted into the sky.”The decline led to Buffalo investing its psyche into its sports teams as a way of remaining part of the national conversation.”Our teams were the only way we could punch back and say, `Yeah, we’re here,”’ Bakay said.Allen and the prospect of adding Dahlin have recaptured his imagination as to what’s possible.”It’s like all of a sudden we’ve got go-big-or-go-home-talent coming our way,” Bakay said.He recalled how the Bills once pinned their hopes on quarterback Trent Edwards, who earned the nickname ”Captain Checkdown” for being overly cautious.”After years of the Trent Edwards of the world, we get a kid who has that kind of talent,” Bakay said.Maybe, he’ll finally be able to get off that couch.”I don’t think we need any kind of help of, `Can we believe?’ We can believe in a bag of doughnuts,” Bakay said. ”But that weekend was like, `Oh my god. Things are really happening. Pinch me.”’—This story has been corrected to note Tom Calderone is from Long Island, New York.