Early Thursday morning, a disappointed and exhausted Karl Alzner returned home with his fiancé Mandy. Alzner, who was on the ice when the Rangers’ Marian Gaborik ended Game Three in triple overtime, had just participated in the longest NHL game since 2008 and the third longest game in Washington Capitals history.

Unfortunately for Karl, the deflating loss was just the beginning of his problems. In a tweet at 2 AM, Alzner published a photo with the caption Dogs not happy about the loss either. In the picture, Alzner’s dogs can be seen posing — proudly — in front of his trashed living room.

D’awwwwww.

Since then the photo has gone viral, showing up on multiple national websites. On Friday, NHL Live hosts EJ Hradek and Deb Placey asked Karl to tell the story behind the picture.

“In the picture on the left is Duncan and on the right is Charlie,” Alzner began. “Another culprit is Murphy, who me and Mandy assume is the ringleader. He was hiding at the time.”

“I was excited to be home and see the dogs,” Alzner, who estimated that he got 2,500 more twitter followers due to the photo, explained. “Usually we have them in a crate, but Mandy was leaving early to go to the game and we knew that they’d be in [the crates] for a while.”

That’s when the 23-year-old Capitals defenseman felt sorry for his pets and decided to let them be free and roam the house for the night.

“We thought maybe we’ll give them a chance,” he said. “Everything should be fine. Then we came in and they greeted us at the door. We took them outside to go to the bathroom and then we walked up the stairs and sure enough, there was their mess.”

Alzner was shocked by the destruction. It was obviously the last thing he wanted to see that night after such a tough loss.

Lesson learned, right? From now on, the Caps just need to end all their games in regulation so that his dogs won’t run wild. Alzner disagreed: “I have a feeling they got to work on that right away.”

Video