'Be The Team That Cranks It Up'

WASHINGTON – Go ahead. Take a plunge. On this of all nights, there can be no dipping your toe in the water.

Not with one of the NHL’s great goal-scorers on the other side – a man who’s only 75 snipes from passing Wayne Gretzky and becoming the game’s top gunner – along with a winless Capitals team in search of their first tally of the new season.

They’re hungry, alright.

But the question is: Who has the bigger appetite?

“Eventually, you want them to take it on their own, but or now, that's a coach's responsibility to make sure (the players) understand how the game's going to be and how hard it's going to be,” said Head Coach Ryan Huska. “This is very similar to what we saw the other night. These guys have won (the Stanley Cup) recently, so there are a lot of guys that understand the 'hard' part of the game.

“We have to be ready to embrace that part, for sure.”

It was, in the coach’s own words, an area that needed attention following Saturday’s 5-2 loss in Pittsburgh. Because on that night – while the work ethic was there and the team’s overall game was miles better than it was in their season-opening win over the Jets – a couple of ‘mental mistakes’ led to a third-period collapse in a game they initially felt good about.

They were the better of the two teams and carried a 1-0 lead into the second intermission, having outplayed the Pens for long stretches in their own barn.

On most nights, that’s a great spot to find yourself in – and certainly one the Flames will want to close out if a similar situation presents itself tonight in the American capital.

But it’s why the game fell apart the other night that matters here. Not how.

Is it something that actually needs ‘fixing’? Or, is it simply a matter of mistakes happening at the most inopportune time? Something that gets cleaned up with reps, when the free-wheeling, high-powered offence of opening week tends to cool off?

“It happens,” Huska said. “You look at some of the scorers around the league, there are some higher scorers to start with. That's due to some mistakes where people are trying to figure things out, for sure, but I think for our team, it's making sure that we're learning we need to play (at) a certain pace to the game for a full 60 minutes.

“That's something we have to do early on.

“We want to be the team that cranks it up. Not the team that when it gets cranked up, we have to respond. We want to make sure we're ready for pace for a full 60 minutes tonight.”

Inside the room, Mikael Backlund has the group in the right headspace. The captain praised the team’s work ethic in Pittsburgh and said the progression he saw from Game 1 to Game 2 was proof the team is headed in the right direction.

While he’s not downplaying the magnitude of Saturday’s third-period breakdowns, he says you can’t let that distract the troupe from the good things they accomplished.

That, he explains, will supply the blueprint for tonight.

“I thought the team was more loose the other night – but in a good way,” he said. “We were a little tentative, a little tight, in that first game. But it was much better in Pittsburgh, especially in the first or second period. Yes, there was that collapse, but your team gets better if you learn from those situations and that's what we're looking to do tonight.

“We talked about it after, how there were definitely things we can change going into the next game – and there were some things in the pre-scout that we're going to key on tonight in that area.

“But it's a fast game. Things are going to happen. It's unfortunate it we had three mistakes happen so quickly off the hop in that third period, but it's how you respond.

“We win and we lose as a team, and we're going to be better tonight.”