The Washington Capitals made it hard for themselves. On Wednesday night they were leading 3-1 after the second period just to let the Toronto Maple Leafs get a whiff of hope. Over the next seven minutes of the game Toronto closed down the lead, equalized and went up by 1 goal. Alexander Semin was able to score for the Capitals to take them into overtime where they got it together and pulled out a 5-4 in shootout. “We’ve got to buckle down if we’re up 3-1. We can’t let them back in the game and we let them back. We kind of gave them three goals and we’d like to have those back, that’s for sure.”
Even though he was ill and coaches did not know whether he could play until warm up Alexander Semin did not show any weakness and score the game-winning goal. The Capitals were able to record a win but this was not enough for them. Their goals for the season are different than playing catch up with teams they should be beating and they know they have to pick it up to get where they want to be. This will be a lesson for the future as Boyd Gordon puts it – “We’ve got to do a little bit better job with the leads, but tonight we got away with it.”
