Tuesday after practice, Todd Reirden spoke about all the happenings of the day from Martin Fehervary’s surprise call-up to Ilya Samsonov’s injury.

At the end of his press conference, Reirden was asked about a humorous play involving Evgeny Kuznetsov against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Sunday. In the second period, Kuznetsov tried to go onto the Penguins bench after he noticed the Capitals had too many men on the ice.

The ploy didn’t work, but it did get a massive chuckle out of his head coach.

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“That’s sometimes where his mind is at,” Reirden said laughing. “He’s not wrong in what he was doing! At that point, he knew. He’s creative. In a number of different ways, he’s creative.”

One of the ways Kuznetsov is creative is how he scores goals. Minutes after passing up a wide-open chance in the slot, Kuzy curled to the net and lobbed a shot past Matt Murray. It was Kuzy’s 18th goal of the season.

Reirden still managed to turn Kuzy’s creative line change into a teaching moment.

“What isn’t so creative is that’s a couple of games where players have not changed for the proper player,” Reirden added. “And that has been addressed as well. We take penalties, we talk about trying to clean up taking penalties, and then we take two too many men penalties last couple games by players who aren’t paying attention and change for the wrong person. That’s unforced errors and those are things that I’ve talked about for the last little bit here. You can’t afford to do those types of things.”

Headline photo courtesy of the @Capitals