ARLINGTON, VA — As the Capitals labored through a 6-0 loss to the Arizona Coyotes Monday night, Evgeny Kuznetsov watched on from the press box. Head coach Spencer Carbery held Kuznetsov out of the lineup following a poor performance against the Vegas Golden Knights that saw him demoted to the fourth line and ultimately benched.
The decision marked a difficult point for Kuznetsov in a season where he has struggled to produce, and he spoke candidly on Wednesday about how it made him feel.
“It’s shit,” he said. “But you’ve got to accept sometimes and trust the process, and I feel like there is a lot more into that. That was a bad, bad day and bad finish over there. So it’s, just trying to help me, but eventually it was a bad result.”
Carbery had hoped his decision would offer Kuznetsov a “mental reset” and help him return to the player he had once been. Despite the difficulties of sitting out, Kuznetsov admitted it was likely the right call.
“[I need to] play hockey better in every area,” he said, later adding, “I feel like we’ve been missing those 15-20 points by me and that’s 20 goals. If we could score those 20 goals, we’d probably be top-10 in the league in regard to scoring so that’s what we’re missing.
“I understand that, I’m not the guy that’s gonna be making a lot of money and walking around happy when hockey’s not good. I want to play better, I want to succeed here, and I want my team to celebrate every game.”
Despite leading the team’s forwards in ice time before the scratch, Kuznetsov’s season has been far from stellar. He is on his worst scoring pace since his sophomore season with just 9 points (4g, 5a) in 19 games and has had trouble on both ends of the ice, leading to his recent removal from the team’s top line.
Kuznetsov made a point to emphasize his strong relationship with Carbery, though Carbery himself admitted Kuznetsov took the news hard. After a tense relationship with former head coach Peter Laviolette, Kuznetsov called the new head coach a “perfect match” at the start of Training Camp and seemed to stand by that judgement on Wednesday.
“I love Carbs so much,” he said. “I trust what he’s doing and he’s trying to help me find my game and get better and help the team, because I know that I’ve got to be better in every area.”
Even so, processing the news was not easy, nor was watching from afar as his team suffered through a blowout loss that included two power-play goals against in just four opportunities.
“That was a shit,” he said. “It’s not easy to watch the game or be not with the team or step away one day and unfortunately not able to help the team. And especially in that game, it was a tough first period. I felt bad because I felt like I had to be there and had to help the team better in every areas.”
Kuznetsov appeared jovial on Wednesday after practice, smiling and cracking jokes with reporters. Still, it was clear he remained affected by the scratch as it both weighed on his mind and energized him to do better.
“I feel like I want to kill someone since yesterday, in a good way,” he said with a laugh. “It’s hard for me to talk right now. Probably I learn something about this later in my career when I’m going to have time to sit back and think about it, but so far, I understand what he was saying. Like I said, at that point, it’s hard to accept, but I trust him so much. I want to believe in him and he wants to believe in me so I feel like we have a great relationship. So I understand that I need to be better.”
He offered another joke when asked if he leaned on teammates like Alex Ovechkin for support.
“This like a psychologist session right now?” he cackled. “I have no answer for you. Of course. We’re family here, we all care about each other and you know, it doesn’t matter who in the lineup, you always go talk to him, there’s another game and stuff like that. Of course we do care about each other a lot here.”
Although he noted he has stayed off of social media, the public’s reaction to his play and subsequent scratch were not easy to escape. When he returns to the lineup on Thursday against the Dallas Stars, he hopes to prove them wrong.
“I just want those people putting a lot of pressure and a lot of bad words on my name, I’ll pay back one day and use that as a motivation.”
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
