Only a few players in the NHL are as synonymous with their teams as Alex Ovechkin is with the Washington Capitals. It’s nearly impossible to think of one without the other.
He’s played the LA Kings just seven times in his career though, winning the first two meetings and now having dropped five straight – after last night’s lopsided 5-2 loss.
When the dust settled, here’s what they were saying in the Caps locker room…
Ovechkin on the overall game – “I don’t think it’s all about me; it’s all about us. We wanted to have a good start and we had a good start. Two mistakes cost us almost the whole game—Wideman lost a guy in our zone and he got a goal and Laich lost a puck. I’m not calling out only these two guys, I had mistakes in our zone and everybody had mistakes in our zone and that cost us the game.”
Ovechkin on his team’s performance – “I think we had a pretty good start. We had emotion and we scored the first goal. After that we just stopped playing and my line had a couple of chances. Including that, we didn’t do anything in the offensive zone and I think there was communication in the neutral zone and we started playing in the defensive zone.”
Ovechkin on the power plays – “If you score on power plays it’s a big advantage and you have to use it. Today we had only two power plays and on the second one we had a pretty good chance to score.”
Coach Dale Hunter on the overall game – “They came out pretty hard on us and they fore-checked us hard. We came out in the first few shifts and Johansson scored, but they out-hit us tonight. We didn’t play tough enough against them and it happens.”
Hunter on giving up chances – “We made some bad decisions [like] pinching in the neutral zone. When you pinch you have to be 100 percent sure that you get the puck and we made some bad decisions. When they pinch they came right back on us with a 3-on-1 and put it in the net.”
To hear more post game reaction from the Washington side, click here to watch comments from Jason Chimera, Matt Hendricks, Marcus Johansson and Karl Alzner via CapsTV.
As for the Kings, there was a lot of talk about Ovechkin yesterday. Dustin Brown was talking about him before the game (here) and Jack Johnson was talking about him after the game (here).
It’s worth noting, the Johnson article also includes video of him doing the Tim Tebow pose after scoring a goal in the second period.
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