Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette had an interview milestone postgame on Sunday.
You had to listen closely, but Laviolette finally admitted that the Capitals will not make the postseason for what we believe is the first time publicly this year.
Laviolette’s revelation came at the 58-second mark of his postgame presser after the Capitals lost to the New York Rangers 5-2, marking their fourth consecutive defeat.
The bolded part of Laviolette’s quote was added by us for emphasis.
Q. Just the position you guys are at here, how difficult is it just to deal with just the emotional swings and everything and a lot of guys probably haven’t been in this situation before this late in the year. Has that been tough, mentally?
Peter Laviolette: Yeah, it’s certainly not where we want to be. But the bottom line is, we had a game today and we needed to do better. Same thing will go true when we wake up, go to practice the next day and play the next game. We’ve got the responsibility to do our job, do it well. Today we didn’t do it well enough. We haven’t done it well enough where sit in the position where we sit in. So it’s of our own doing, where we’re at right now. We can be better. We can be better than we were today. So does it work against a little bit? Yeah, I think so. From a confidence standpoint, coming in or moving on to the postseason, and you’re not, and that’s coming backwards at us but we’ve got to fight through it and be better than we were today.
Laviolette, who is in the final year of his contract, has seemingly been the last person in the organization to admit the obvious. There’s no benefit for him personally to highlight negatives of the team’s difficult year.
Some recent samplings of his positive and perhaps unrealistic quotes include “it’s obviously a big game for us” before the matchup against the New York Rangers on March 14; remarking it’s “such a big game” before puck drop against the Pittsburgh Penguins on March 25; and “anything’s possible” before the team’s matchup against the New York Islanders on March 29. The Capitals lost all three of those games.
If Laviolette had remaining hope for the Capitals’ season, this past stretch of games has been the final nail in the coffin. The Caps dropped four straight against the Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Islanders, Tampa Bay Lightning, and New York Rangers. The loss against Tampa clinched Washington’s first sub-90 point full-season since the 2006-07 campaign.
Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan said in a post-trade-deadline interview that he believed the team would need 95 to 96 points to go dancing. Though the Capitals have not been mathematically eliminated, at this point it’s only a matter of time, with Money Puck giving the team a 0.0 percent of making the postseason even before Sunday’s loss.
It seems like the team has resigned themselves to an early summer, but that won’t let them stop trying to finish the season strong.
“You’re still trying to fight for every game,” Dylan Strome said after the game. “We’re proud guys in here and obviously want to win. Mathematically obviously it doesn’t look great. I think we’re all aware of that.
“But you keep fighting every day until the 82nd game’s done. Like I said, we’re proud guys in here. Love that effort tonight. Come back and get a big win in Montreal and go from there.”
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
