Via the team:
Washington Capitals head coach Adam Oates on the play of the Capitals in the 2nd and 3rd periods…
“We talk all the time about the way to win games in this league right now. It’s really difficult. You saw that. Their goalie played great. He played great last time in here; both goalies did tonight. You’ve got to grind it out. You’ve got to be willing to grind it out. The second half of the game I guess we did a better job of doing that.”
Washington Capitals head coach Adam Oates on overcoming a quick goal and grinding it out…
“There are nights that you can score two early and that opens the team up because that’s human nature and your skills can show. But for me, no matter who it is, you have to be willing to play a certain style and over the course of the game your skill set will show itself. You look at the second goal. We played good d-zone coverage. They go down the ice. Fehrsie [Eric Fehr] makes a good pass. Grabo’s [Mikhail Grabovski] there. Good player. Stops where he’s supposed to stop and releases the puck and scores. Not really a fancy goal, but it is just because the guys had executed and did their jobs. The better we get at that, the better chance we have for success.”
Washington Capitals forward Alex Ovechkin on winning tonight’s game…
“It’s huge for us right now. Maybe it was not our best game, but we spend lots of time in the offensive zone. Of course we make a couple mistakes, but right now, it’s two points and we’ll take it.”
Washington Capitals forward Alex Ovechkin on what the Capitals can learn from tonight’s win…
“I don’t think we have a good start. Probably we have not spent too much time in our zone in our house. We make turnovers, we make bad decisions with the puck, but again, it was good. We were losing one to nothing after the first and we come back [with] a big goal from Fehrsie [Eric Fehr] in second period.”
Washington Capitals forward Eric Fehr on the play of the Montreal Canadiens…
“They [Montreal] really took it to us. They are pretty shifty up front. They have a lot of speed, and I don’t think we were fully prepared for that. They had a lot of offensive chances; obviously Holtsy [Braden Holtby] did a great job of keeping us in it and we were able to reward him later in the game.”
Washington Capitals forward Eric Fehr on looking forward to the New York Islanders…
“We got to recover quick and get down there and just try to carry some of the momentum we had in the second period of the game. I thought we played a lot more physical, and I thought that was a bigger reason why we came back. We were physical on their D [defense], creating a few more turnovers and a lot harder on their forwards. We weren’t letting them spin off us. And I think that was a big part of the second half of the game.”
Montreal Canadiens head coach Michel Therrien on how he thinks his team played tonight…
“I thought we were the team that dictated the game in the third [period]. I thought we played well enough to win the game, so I’m disappointed that we came up short, but I believe our effort was there and when you go to a shootout, you never know. We found a way to score two goals but it was not good enough.”
Montreal Canadiens head coach Michel Therrien on his teams play and the play of Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby…
“We didn’t want to change the way we wanted to play. I thought we got some chances in the third [period]. Our power play did a good job but their goalie made some key saves at the right time. He played well.”
Montreal Canadiens goaltender Peter Budaj on tonight’s game and the two goals he let in…
“I don’t want to take anything away from Washington, [but] we had 37 shots and we took it to them. [Washington] stuck with it, got a couple lucky goals. The first [goal] was a miscommunication. I made a bad play and it ended up in the net. The other [goal] was just a quick shot and it trickled through me so it’s a disappointing result.”
Montreal Canadiens goaltender Peter Budaj on whether he believed his team sat back too much late in the game…
“I think we had some good chances even though we were up. We were still playing and trying to force turnovers and work hard. We were trying to not play on our heels and we battled hard, it’s just that [Washington] is a skilled team and they made the most of their chances.”
Montreal Canadiens forward Tomas Plekanec on whether his team eased off the gas in the 3rd period…
“Maybe a little bit, they were down by one goal so they pressured hard, but even the second period or the second half of the game, we had some bad shifts in our [defensive] zone where we didn’t get the puck out of the zone or we had some turnovers. [Washington] had some good shifts so that’s where it started.”
Montreal Canadiens forward Tomas Plekanec on how his line with Daniel Briere and Brian Gionta fared tonight…
“Tonight, we had a little bit more of a chance to play an offensive game. We got an early goal so that helped us, and we could play a little bit more offense because they didn’t really want to match us with Backstrom [Nicklas Backstrom] and Ovechkin [Alex Ovechkin] so we tried to take advantage of it and we did a good job.”