In Toronto, Braden Holtby made 30 saves and the Washington Capitals defeated the Boston Bruins, 2-1, in regulation on Sunday. The win earns the Caps the third seed in the Eastern Conference.
“Yeah feel pretty comfortable right now,” Holtby said. “Put a lot of work in the last couple months and had to fix a few things and work on a few things over the break to strengthen up, and every game we played here you get a little more stamina and more and more comfortable, and I think the whole group is pretty comfortable going into round one now.”
Tom Wilson and TJ Oshie scored for the Caps.
“Obviously it’s been a couple years now, so it’s died down a little bit, but the importance of knowing some of the tendencies, some of the things that I have seen Barry Trotz’s teams do and his coaching style and stuff is stuff that I pay close attention to for a few years,” said Capitals coach Todd Reirden, who was an assistant under Trotz. “It’s something that’ll be obviously a great matchup for the Washington Capitals and New York Islanders. It’s not Barry Trotz vs. Todd Reirden or any of those type of things.”
Jake DeBrusk was the lone goal scorer for the Bruins whose offense disappeared in the round robin tournament.
“We pushed back, certainly,” Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We stayed in the game, clearly generated more offense tonight than we have in other games more consistently. Didn’t finish well around the net a lot 5-on-5. Our power play is still work in progress.
“Obviously the two goals we gave up, again, correctable. One we had on our stick and got a little surprised there and the other one, I don’t know. Could [Rask] have come out and played it? Only he can decide that, but at the end of the day we were just a little late on the pinch.”
[WATCH: All Bruins vs. Capitals highlights]
Tuukka Rask made 23 saves in the loss.
“I think these first round-robin games or whatever they were, you just try to shake the rust off and get your team game in a place you want it to be,” Rask said. “I think we kind of improved over these three games. We worked very hard for our goals, just didn’t get rewarded, but I think that’s going to come, you find a way. It doesn’t matter what seed you are. You have to beat every team anyways if you want to advance. I think we feel good. It’s over now and we start real hockey.”
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