Via the team:
Washington Capitals head coach Adam Oates on the Ottawa Senators having a playoff spot to play for…
“We talked about that. We knew that they would be a desperate team and try and create the playoff atmosphere. We played two nights ago and it was pretty electric in here. We had to try and let that go and get ready for tonight, and I thought we did a pretty good job of it.”
Washington Capitals head coach Adam Oates on learning from the past three games versus the Senators…
“The first game was a long time ago, and I think they’re playing better now than they did then. They got [Erik] Karlsson back, and we saw a little bit of what he can bring tonight. They’re a good hockey team, and if we end up playing for them we’ll be ready for them.”
Washington Capitals Steven Olesky on the play of the Capitals tonight…
“We had some great chances tonight. Obviously Backy [Nicklas Backstrom] in the third there, most of the time those go in, but we just didn’t get the bounces. It’s tough to win games when you only score one goal.”
Washington Capitals Steven Oleksy on the intensity and effort tonight…
“I feel the effort was there. I feel that if we get a couple of bounces to go the other way, I think it’s a completely different game we are talking about. At the end of the day, we failed to get the job done, but the effort was definitely there.”
Washington Capitals defenseman Karl Alzner on the play of the Capitals tonight…
“We gave it more. Still we have more to give. Didn’t see as much of our offensive zone play as we normally like to have; not as much cycles. There’s still more that we could have done, but it was better than our last one.”
Washington Capitals defenseman Mike Green on the possibility of playing Ottawa in the playoffs…
“We will see what happens. They are a good team and it would be a great match up, but we will figure out a way [to win]. At the end of the day, if you out work your opponent you’ll win.”
Ottawa Senators head coach Paul MacLean on his team clinching a spot in the playoffs and what it means…
“It’s a tremendous credit to our players first of all and their perseverance through quite a bit of adversity this season….for us to make the playoffs under the circumstances that we were put under early in the season, I think is a great accomplishment by the group and the players deserve all of the credit because they came out and played real hard.”
Ottawa Senators head coach Paul MacLean on how the team wanted to win to get in…
“I think we were always in control of our own destiny. In this league, I believe, you have to win to get in, you can’t sit around and wait for someone else to help you or hope someone helps you, and we were determined all year long in our effort and we wanted to make sure. We knew that we had to win one of our last three games in order to clinch the playoff spot and we came out tonight and did a great job at taking care of business right away.”
Ottawa Senators defenseman Erik Karlsson on getting the two points and clinching…
“We came here yesterday with the goal to get two points and I think we did an okay game. We got the two points and we should be happy with that. There’s some things to work on but overall this is what we came here for, and we took it.”
Ottawa Senators defenseman Erik Karlsson on how he felt tonight in his first game back…
“I felt okay. I battled some issues out there and didn’t feel quite as comfortable as I’m used too but overall it was a solid game. I still have to work through some mistakes and clean those up.”
Ottawa Senators goaltender Craig Anderson on how tonight went…
“You couldn’t have wrote it any better than how it went. We played really well from start to finish, we took care of the puck when we had to take care of the puck, we threw a lot of things at the net, we were getting to the net, we were getting a lot of traffic and it was overall a great sixty minutes by everybody.”
Ottawa Senators goaltender Craig Anderson on how it felt to win and make the playoffs…
“We’ve come a long way, we’ve grown as a team and we’ve found ways to win games. At this time of the season and going forward here, it doesn’t matter how good or bad you play, but if you come out on top at the end of the game, that’s really all that matters.”