Resilience Was The Capitals' Bread & Butter All Season. How Do They Get It Back Now? With Good Old Fashioned 'Belief' & 'Fight'
The Capitals have only lost three straight games twice this season. They'll have to showcase that same resiliency from the regular season if they want to keep their run alive.
ARLINGTON, V.A. — The Washington Capitals aren’t ones to hang their heads — and they don’t plan to now.
Even going into a do-or-die Game 5 against the Carolina Hurricanes, the Capitals haven’t given up hope.
"We believe in here. We know what this team can do,” Tom Wilson said matter-of-factly.
A 3-1 series deficit is far from ideal, but it’s not insurmountable. The Capitals have overcome it twice in their franchise history, once in 1988 and most recently in 2009 against the New York Rangers. Now, against the high-flying Hurricanes, they know it won’t be an easy feat — but it’s a possible one.
"Just focus on tomorrow's task,” Dylan Strome said, adding, “We've found ways to win important games, and tomorrow's no different. One game at a time. Hopefully win Game 5 and put a little pressure on them."
What makes the task at hand easier to handle, though, is just how resilient Washington has proven to be all season long. The team never dropped more than three consecutive games, and over the course of the 82-game campaign, suffered just two three-game slides.
"At this point of the year, if you lose two in a row, it's usually not a good thing. We did a great job all year finding ways to not let one loss pile into two and three (in the regular season), and obviously we need that now,” Strome said. “Our backs are against the wall, of course, but I've got a lot of belief in this team and what's to come.”
The team has faced several forks in the road over the course of the year, from Alex Ovechkin’s broken leg to Logan Thompson and Aliaksei Protas’ extended absences going into the postseason to Martin Fehervary’s season-ending surgery. It led to lessons learned, though, and coach Spencer Carbery believes the group will apply those in Game 5.
"There were some things we learned about each other as a group, of digging in when we needed to. Actually, when it was like, 'Okay, let's see our best on display right now.' There were multiple times where our group stepped up,” Carbery said. “I think leaning in scenarios of high pressure… our team has been pretty mentally tough all year long in all different situations.”
For the Capitals, that ability to bounce back stems from the mentality in the locker room, which remains alive and well in the postseason.
"It's a close group, so when you talk about resiliency, it means being able to look at the guy next to you and knowing that tomorrow night we're going to get his A game,” Wilson said. “That's a cool thing, and I have no doubt with this group that the guys sitting on either side of me and across from me are going to bring everything they have.”
Of course, it’s easier said than done, and it’ll take more than attitude to pull off a win against Carolina.
One of the biggest tasks at hand is sustaining pressure and generating more offense, and finding a way to solve a red-hot Frederik Andersen, whether it be turning up the shot volume or finding a way to get those fortunate bounces to go D.C.’s way.
"We'd like to get more pucks at Freddie. He's been great all series, and we've got to find a way to break through, so if that’s more shots or if that's better quality — I feel like we're still passing up a few opportunities to shoot,” Strome noted.
With the Capitals looking for more success offensively, coach Spencer Carbery put the lines in a blender, reuniting Anthony Beauvillier with Dylan Strome and Alex Ovechkin while putting Connor McMichael in for Lars Eller as the third-line center.
"Sometimes that's the way it goes in hockey. It's hard to score goals. The high-danger chances are there. We've got to capitalize. And then I think the more chances we can generate, the more pucks to the net and just staying on it and staying with them, they'll start to go,” Wilson said.
Regardless of the lineup or game plan, Washington’s players are relying on one another to get the job done and are ready to simply lay it all on the line and see what happens next.
“We've had resiliency kind of all year. We love each other in here, and we just want to go out there and leave it all out there and start to slowly try and push them out of the series,” Wilson said, adding, “We're going to do our best to show up and fight. If we do that, we're confident. We're going to make some noise and start with one.”