"It's far from being over," Mario Lemieux said matter-of-factly after the Capitals won the first two games of their best-of-seven Patrick Division semifinal series with Pittsburgh and talk of a Stanley Cup had broken out in Washington.

Lemieux spoke calmly. One has to look hard for his emotions: In defeat, he purses his lips; in victory, a small smile plays on them. He is as firm as steel in his mental approach to the game of hockey, as brilliant perhaps as any player has ever been in its execution.

The 26-year-old, dark-haired Lemieux buttoned his shirt like a businessman who'd finished a lunchtime workout. He was feeling good and simply going back to work.

"We have to go home, regroup and win two big games and then come back here," he said. He had exactly the right thinking, but things didn't turn out exactly as he had thought.

Lemieux erupted for six points to win Game 3 for the Penguins (had he not, the Capitals might have swept four games). But then the Capitals, behind Dino Ciccarelli's four goals, surprised by winning Game 4 on the road.

The Capitals had all but won the series. They were up three games to one, riding the crest of a 7-2 rout.

How could they have lost what they wanted so badly, the quest ending with a 3-1 defeat Friday night at Capital Centre? As Penguins fans at their Civic Arena might answer, "Lemie-u-u-u-u-u. . . ."

But a big assist goes to Scotty Bowman, the winningest coach in National Hockey League history. Down three games to one, embarrassed by the 7-2 score, Bowman clamped his lips even tighter than Lemieux's. "Getting that fourth win is difficult," he said.

He made sure it would be impossible for the Capitals. Their downward spiral began in Game 5 as Bowman built a Berlin wall on his blue line out of slow and previously ragged defensemen. The Penguins used their bodies well and their heads even better. They stopped the Capitals' forwards, they stopped taking stupid penalties, they played smart on offense and defense. Former Capital Larry Murphy scored the winning goal in the 5-2 victory on a power play -- an omen.

In the last three games, the Penguins had eight power-play opportunities and scored on six of them.

Of the six, Lemieux scored two and assisted on the other four.

But Lemieux was hot even before the Penguins started winning. Before the pivotal Game 5 and Bowman's major defensive adjustment, Lemieux's work was going to waste. After missing Game 1 because of a shoulder injury, Lemieux scored four times and assisted five times on the Penguins' 10 goals in Games 2, 3 and 4.

Bowman's adjustment let Lemieux's work pay off. Yesterday, a disappointed Capitals Coach Terry Murray could not stop thinking about Lemieux.

"There are very few people in the league who can do that in a playoff situation," Murray said. "{Wayne} Gretzky just finished in the playoffs, and Edmonton did a great job in shadowing him with {Esa} Tikkanen, and he {Gretzky} was a nonfactor. The emotion of Gretzky not being there affected the team {Los Angeles}."

Having second thoughts, Murray added: "With Lemieux, it was the emotion that he brought to the team and a reason they caught on fire. To look back and say we should have had a checking line on him on a consistent basis, we can say that. . . .

"But that is hindsight. To look at the regular season series {won 5-2 by the Capitals} and the first four games of this series, it was tough to go to the players and say, 'Here's what we have to do,' after leading three {games} to one" -- that is, make a dramatic change by putting out a checking line against Lemieux and a shadow to try to cover him.

But since Bowman's defensive strategy in Game 5 worked, a dramatic change as well by the Capitals might have caught the Penguins off guard. To have changed up on them while they were changing up on the Capitals. . . . Murray was left to dwell on that thought for the indefinite future.

So the Capitals went into Game 5 having no reason to think that their balanced scoring would dry up and fail them. All season opponents had not been able to concentrate on any one Capitals scorer. It had been a team of surprises -- leading to the league's second-best record during the regular season.

But fifth games are notoriously crucial, and what followed was a Capitals' downturn and a Penguins' upswing.

"I think we all figured Game 5 would be the game that we put it away, and we came away disappointed that we did not," Murray said. "Pittsburgh changed to a style that was much more patient."

In Game 7, Murray went to a checking line of Mike Ridley, Kelly Miller and Dave Tippett as much as possible against Lemieux. Miller shadowed Lemieux as much as he could. Once Miller hit Lemieux hard on the boards. But in answer to an often-asked question -- Why doesn't anyone hammer Lemieux? -- the 6-foot-4, 210-pounder is difficult to reach, with long arms that can keep a foe at a distance. Most of all, the Montreal native is a smooth and shifty skater, adept at loping away from trouble with long, effortless-looking strides. He doesn't wait for consequences -- he's already ramming home the truth somewhere else.

Meanwhile, Bob Errey, Phil Bourque and Gordie Roberts took turns shadowing Ciccarelli, who did not score a goal in the last three games. Errey said that defense had won the Stanley Cup for them last season, and that there was no arguing with Bowman's strategy. "We knew we had to get back to that," he said.

Bowman's timing was perfect.

After Game 5, some of the Capitals shrugged and said they had two more chances to win the series. They'd forgotten something.

Last Monday was the 12th time in their playoff history that the Capitals had played a Game 5. The first 11 times, the winner of Game 5 won the series. This time was no different.

Staff writer Dave Sell contributed to this report.