Hard to find a more honest assessment of the Caps’ last two games than the one veteran winger Mike Knuble delivered on Tuesday night. Of course, maybe throwing the words “clowns” and “losers” around was a little harsh.
“I probably could’ve used a little more tact or whatever,” Knuble said. “I’m not a fan of talking about my team to everybody else before I talk amongst yourselves. I probably could’ve used some better words, maybe. I don’t know. But the fact is we’re not playing well, and that was pretty evident in our practice.”
Tried to find someone in the Washington locker room to dispute that and struck out. Most players generally agreed with the tone Knuble tried to strike. He was visibly frustrated after a 5-2 loss to the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night when Washington’s compete level seemed to disappear.
“You say stuff after a game when you’re kind of pissed off,” forward Jason Chimera said. “[Knuble] is one of the most classy guys in the world. He’s not calling us clowns. We shouldn’t play like that. And if you’re playing like that you are playing like losers.”
Fair enough. So Wednesday’s bag skate was about setting the tone for later in the week when the Caps have to play the New Jersey Devils in back-to-back games. They put together a fine body of work in October with seven consecutive wins to start the season and a 9-4 record overall now. They have no desire to see that slip away.
“I think for the most part, guys are unhappy with how we played last night,” veteran center Jeff Halpern said. “The good thing about this league is you don’t have to wait long for your next game.”
Again, it’s just two bad games. The Caps looked pretty good against Carolina last Friday, after all. Star forward Alex Ovechkin said it’s no time for team meetings. But he also didn’t disagree with Knuble’s post-game comments, either, and said he had no problem with the 39-year-old veteran airing them in public.
“Everybody wants to say what they have to say,” Ovechkin said. “If I want to say ‘We played like clowns’ I’m going to say it. I think we are play like clowns last night because we don’t have any effort. We play only I think a couple minutes well and after that we just give them everything that they want.”
Ovechkin said he was fine with Wednesday’s bag skate – even the odd “battle” drill where assistant coach Dean Evason pushed both goals close together in one corner of the rink and had two forwards and two defenseman do battle. He’d never seen that one before. It was actually kind of fun. But, according to Ovechkin, words go only so far right now.
“I think motivation [is that] we lost. It’s not just all about words to say something,” Ovechkin said. “Like if we’re going see some fans going to say something, like we’re clowns and play like a group of idiots, it’s not going to be motivation for us. It’s just motivation that we lose.”
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