The Capitals’ bench looks on during the second period of a Game 1 loss to the Penguins. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

For six days, the Pittsburgh Penguins rested. On the seventh, they created: a Game 1 win over Washington that took home-ice advantage away from the Presidents’ Trophy winners and put the Capitals, for the third time already in these playoffs, in a spot that championship-quality teams think of as almost dire.

Conventional wisdom flowed after the Pens’ 3-2 win at Verizon Center about how this will be a long, tough series between two wonderful teams, perhaps even a de facto Stanley Cup finals, played too early but still enormously significant.

“Listen, Washington’s a real good hockey team. They’ve got real good players, and this is two good teams goin’ at it,” Pens Coach Mike Sullivan said in a frontal assault on the NHL cliche record. “There’s going to be times when they come at us, and there are going to be times when we go at them. That’s what we expect.”

Why didn’t Sullivan just hold up an old-fashioned gold watch on a chain, swing it back and forth and say, “You are feeling tired. You are getting sleepy. Sleeeepy.”

He’s probably right: This is going to be a long, wonderful seesaw series — that is, if the Caps win Game 2. If they don’t, if they lose the first two games on home ice, then realists in zip code 20004 will know the true odds. The Caps’ chances of advancing, according to NHL history, are 21 percent.

In the 87 times that an NHL team has squandered the first two games at home, just 18 of them have won the series. Forget the Caps’ peculiar history of beating the Pens in Game 1s in eight of nine previous series over the decades and, every time but once, losing anyway. Doesn’t that mean that losing Game 1 isn’t so important? Yes, if it’s the Pens who lose it — and against the Caps. But citing Caps history is like calling the Cubs a normal franchise.

[Braden Holtby said he should have stopped Sidney Crosby’s first goal, ‘and will next time’]

What losing Game 1 at home means in all sports and for all teams is: Early wake-up call, boys! Plan A — jump ahead of ’em — is toast. Trouble, dead ahead.

Given the Pens’ mystique, especially against Washington, and the Caps’ memories, that means Game 2 on Saturday night at Verizon Center instantly has achieved the same stature as Games 4 and 6 against Toronto in the first round: The Caps don’t have to win, but they certainly better.

The more honest the Caps are with themselves about the true difficulty of title runs — how nearly terrifying they can seem at times and how quickly true crises jump up in your face — the better they can cope with them. If this seems unfair, it is. But so are the playoffs in every sport. They lull you with the promise of “seven games” — except it isn’t a promise, just a possibility.

Welcome to playoff paradox. As a data point in the relative strength of these teams, Game 1 was an argument for the Caps. If they win this series, they’ll probably look back and say that, despite the Pens’ six days of rest, Washington almost won Game 1, dominated the hitting and had the Pens diving en masse on top of pucks in their own crease like real penguins jumping off an ice flow.

But it’s just as true, and more substantial on the results sheet, to say that the Pens unwound 82 games of remarkable regular season work by the Caps — that 118-111 point edge in the standings that gained Washington home ice — with one night of clutch work in Verizon Center. They came to the District looking to flip home-ice edge. They have. Now they have a shot at the kind of two-games-to-none lead that could drag the Caps’ ghouls and ghosties out of the subconscious.

Now, for the good Caps news. Most of the time, when a trend shows up in Game 1, it tends to loom over the series. Usually, a seven-game head-to-head match is a process of one team imposing its style and will on the other. The Caps had to convince the Maple Leafs that their youth, speed, throw-everything-on-net-and-pray approach wasn’t going to steal a shocking upset. But it took time.

The longer this series goes, the better the chance that the general shape of Game 1, rather than just its score, will become decisive.

“We had 80-plus pucks at their net to 40-plus” shot attempts by the Pens, Caps Coach Barry Trotz said. “All three [Pens] goals were very preventable.”

“We had pucks behind” Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, Trotz added, “just not far enough behind him. That’s why they have that line there.”

However, there was one huge hitch to this kind of analysis.

“They don’t look at chances,” Trotz said. “They look at goals.”

[Capitals-Penguins second-round series guide: Game 2 preview and discussion thread]

The Penguins came to the District with two goals. First, to take back home ice, which they’ve done. Second, to convince the Caps that nothing has changed, that Sidney Crosby will score two goals in the first 64 seconds of the second period to define the shape of the game and that, after the Caps battle back to tie at 2, it will still be a Pen wearing No. 13 — nemesis Nick Bonino , a third-liner — who will score the winner. Why? Because the Pens, as they’ll tell you, are clutch. Are you?

“Bones is a guy that is a high-stakes player,” Sullivan said. “He brings his best game when things are [important]. We’ve got a lot of guys on our roster that we can say that about. They are a battle-tested group. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch. . . . But this is a resilient group that’s determined to find ways to win.

“It’s our ability to push back when you lose momentum . . . to maintain the right focus and discipline . . . and not allow those momentum swings or surges to hurt us that’s going to continue to help us have success.”

Why not just hold up a sign that says, “We’re the Pens. You’re probably not.”

The defending NHL-champ Pens entered this series with one edge: rest. Tons of it. They crunched Columbus in five games, while the Caps neededsix games against Toronto — five of them in overtime. However, by Saturday night, that advantage the Pens may have had will presumably be minimized. Then, with a Caps win, a long, thrilling series will unfold.

Or, because it never helps to avoid the reality of your situation, the Caps will be down two to nothing and the Legacy of the Ovechkin Era, as well as the Year of the Last Best Chance, suddenly will be on the line heading to Pittsburgh.

And nobody in the Red Rockin’ 20004 wants that.

For more by Thomas Boswell, visit washingtonpost.com/boswell.