Capitals Locker Room: Ovechkin Cites Rust After Break, Strome & Sandin Stress Need To Play Smarter

WASHINGTON — After falling into a disastrous 3-0 deficit to open action after the All-Star break, the Washington Capitals pushed to get back on track and had a solid second that somewhat carried over to the third period against the Montreal Canadiens. However, it wasn't enough and resulted in a 5-2 loss, their fifth straight defeat.

Here's what Alex Ovechkin, Dylan Strome and Rasmus Sandin had to say postgame.

On the comeback in the second period: "Maybe it was kind of break, seven days break and there was kind of little dust, but you can see how we play second period. We didn't use our chances, we have plenty of them but again, if we want to play like second period we are gonna have success."

On the rough starts of late for the Capitals: "it's one of those times in the season where the pucks, just whatever we do, find their way in our net. So we make a turnover, puck goes off the post right to their guy, you know, third goal's kind of just off the draw and they jus get a nice shot to through the screen. So I mean, these are things that we just got to buckle down on and focus."

On the defensive struggles: "I think right now just look at their goals that they're getting and some of them are on the rush, a couple of them. I mean, the first one, I don't even know where I'm going there first, I'm trying to join the rush and misread the situation a little bit and it came back so. I think we just need to tighten up and I think play more as we did in the second and third period. We were getting pucks deep and we were skating a lot and we were playing physical, so just keeping it simple. Just look how the game looked in the second period especially. I thought we did a pretty good job there."