Via the team:
Washington Capitals head coach Adam Oates on the team’s even strength play…
“We have to take care of our own end better. We’ve mentioned it lately and you know what, we do – we need to play better in our own end. Obviously, we want to score. We want to get down the ice, but until we cross the blue line, we can’t.”
Washington Capitals head coach Adam Oates on the Capitals 5-on-3 power play…
“We had a couple of good chances. Sometimes you get a little too cute. You don’t want to make a dirty play, but you know what, we made a great play there. If it goes in, like I said, it’s a different game.”
Washington Capitals center Marcus Johansson on what the Capitals can do looking forward…
“We just have to keep working on it. I think if we would have had the first one tonight, it would have been a totally different game, and I think we started pretty well. We all know we can score, so it’s hard to say, but at the end of the night you have to score goals to win hockey games.”
Washington Capitals defenseman John Carlson on generating more at even strength…
“We are a good enough team that we need to have that in the back of our heads at all times. When we are playing in our zone, worry about our zone – and then when we go into the offensive zone, that’s our time to shine. I think it’s just taking a little bit different approach.”
Washington Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby on the Capitals moving forward…
“The preparation in the locker room has to get better. It’s as simple as that.”
Washington Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby on who on the Capitals squad is struggling…
“I watch our game as a whole, I don’t really know who is on the ice when, other than the D-men [defensemen]. We can’t single out guys. It’s team effort, and as a group I don’t really think that anyone cares who is on the ice. We have to do better.”
New York Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault on coming into tonight with a good mindset…
“We got a day off in our environment and then had two good practices and came here and put our best foot forward. I thought our guys competed real hard which is the key to any game, and we did a lot of the right things with the puck, and when we didn’t have the puck, we did a lot of the right things. We’ll take our first win in the eastern [time zone].”
New York Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault on how the 5-on-3 penalty kill in the first period was key…
“It’s one thing that we had talked about prior to the game was against that power play and how we were going to handle it and to go down 5-on-3 and have those couple of nice saves from [Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist], it sort of helped us get a little momentum after that and we took it from there.”
New York Rangers forward Brad Richards on the team’s start contributing to a good start and doing the little things…
“I think we had a great start. Without the 5-on-3, we had a great start, we were moving our feet. It’s those little, simple chips behind the [defense], making them go get it with speed – that’s a tough thing, and that’s something we maybe took a lesson from in the San Jose and Anaheim games. Those teams were just coming down, chipping pucks and forechecking us. Our d-zone, our neutral zone, everything was lot more in sync. You could tell we were on the same page a lot more tonight.”
New York Rangers forward [Brian] Boyle on how, even though the power play didn’t score, it set the tone…
“That’s a pretty good team, a pretty offensive team, especially here. I think we did a great job, our power play did a great job and we had some momentum off that. You could see by the way we were playing, we had to play a good game for us.”
New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist on how the first period set the tone for the rest of the game…
“I was a little more aggressive today, and I felt good, but we really set the tone in the first period the way we killed off the penalties. It was just great to see. The timing looked really good, and [we were] blocking shots. We made all the little things right; it’s great to see.”