March 11 postgame quotes: Washington

Barry Trotz, on an “evenly played” game:
Yeah I thought it was. I thought there were a couple things that we were a little bit unlucky. We hit a couple posts there, could’ve been up 4-2 in the second period and we come out 2-2 and then, you know, they score the third one and then an empty net so I thought it was a pretty even game. I thought our compete was pretty good. Yeah, goals aren’t coming. We’re going to have to score more than two goals. We haven’t scored too much lately. [Reporter: Can you put your finger on why that is?] Nope. It’s not coming easy. Like I said, if they go in the net we’ve got four but we didn’t so you just go through it. You’ve got to fight through it. We’ve got to get to the net, we’ve got to shoot, all those types of things. We can bring our penalties down a little bit as well.

Trotz, on Ovechkin struggling to score lately:
Yeah, no, I thought he was skating really well. He was dangerous every shift. He was a force so it’ll come you’ve just got to stay with it.

Trotz, on whether penalties were a problem for the Capitals:
Well any time that we have a push on and obviously taking some penalties late takes away from your push, if you will. I don’t know, we’ve got to stay out of the box a little bit there.

Trotz, on the feeling aftter losing three in a row:
Awkward. We haven’t done that for a while so we’ll have to fight through it. And the only way you do it is together, as a group and we’ll see what we can do tomorrow. The great thing is you get to find out if we can right the ship tomorrow.

Trotz, on whether a playoff race “can be good for the Capitals”:
Yeah, absolutely. We’re in one.

Justin Williams, on losing three games in a row:
Well there’s obviously frustration but you can’t whine and cry about it like babies. You lost three in a row, big deal. Pick it up and get the next one. Good news is there’s usually another game of hockey the next day and we have one tomorrow.

Williams, on avoiding a late-season slide:
I don’t know. It’s just getting yourself mentally ready to play hard games. These are the hard games, the last 15 of the season, and as I said earlier, you can’t get frustrated because say you haven’t scored in a while or something. You’ve got to do what makes you successful within our system. You know, we’re not obviously scoring and winning as we’d like and all teams go through it. The trick is not to let it snowball too far.

Williams, on the Capitals’ struggling to score of late:
Yeah, it’s just harder to score this time of year. So we’ve got to take it upon ourselves to get it done. Get that second effort ’cause that’s what goals are about this season.

Williams, on whether a playoff race “can be a good thing for this team”:
Of course it is, yeah. Any competitiveness and tight-scoring is encouraged and it’s just the way it is now. These are fun games to play.

Williams, on the Capitals compared to other teams he’s played on:
Listen, I’ve been on a lot of great teams and this is certainly a great team. Whether or not it’s a championship team, we’ll see. We think it is but we have to go out and prove it.

Matt Niskanen, on the loss:
We could’ve won that game. We had our chances to score, not a ton of ’em, but we hit some posts. Didn’t generate quite enough and didn’t keep enough out of our net.

Niskanen, on having lost three straight games:
You know, guys played hard tonight so we’re disappointed that we didn’t get better results but I think a little adversity at this time of year is not a bad thing so we’ll keep pushing. Luckily we don’t have to wait long for tomorrow. We’re not happy with the results but let’s find a way to get out of it together.

Niskanen, on the Capitals playing a good possession game:
Yeah we had the puck a lot tonight but possession and generating scoring chances are two different things so we’re going to have to find a way to either shoot from the perimeter and then go for rebounds or fight our way to the interior a little bit more to be a little bit more dangerous because we did have the puck a lot, but a lot of perimeter stuff. We’ve got to get to the slot if we want to score a little bit more.

Philip Grubauer, on the game-winning goal scored by Adrian Kempe:
Yeah, I mean, they did a good job screening. [inaudible] They had a couple shots and they made it really tough to see around. Doesn’t matter if it’s only one shot, you’ve got to stop that and move forward and snipe one here.

Grubauer, on Gaborik’s goal:
He was falling in to me, I tried to get it away from his stick as far as possible. I didn’t see the guy coming in up high, yeah. Could’ve gone either way. We hit two posts. Did a good job, I mean, the game in San Jose was won with special teams and they’re a pretty good power play team. We’ve got to stay out of the box. I think we’re getting back to that habit where we’re taking too many penalties and then it’s really hard to get it going again. I mean, 5-on-5, I don’t think any team, if we play our way, they can move with us.