Capitals Celebrate: Trevor van Riemsdyk Lauded by Coach Carbery; Logan Thompson Honored with Game Puck as Canadiens Bow Out in First Round trucc

The Washington Capitals moved on to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Wednesday after eliminating the Montreal Canadiens in Game Five, 4-1.

Inside a happy Capitals locker room, head coach Spencer Carbery praised his team in his victory speech, putting focus on some of the less heralded players and special teams that got the Capitals to the finish line.

Transcript

Spencer Carbery: F***ing rights, men. Penalty kill, five-on-six, unbelievable job tonight. Power play gets us f***ing two big f***ing goals.

Alex Ovechkin: Atta boy, Mullsy. Atta boy, Mullsy. (Editor’s note: Mullsy is Capitals assitant coach Kirk Muller who is in charge of the power play.)

Unknown Caps player: Good entries!

Another unknown Caps player: Good breakouts!

Spencer Carbery: And this guy was f***ing phenomenal tonight: Logan Thompson.

(Loud clapping from everyone in the locker room)

Spencer Carbery: One more guy I want to highlight. And this guy doesn’t get a ton of credit, but I thought he was f***ing phenomenal in this series: Trevor van Riemsdyk.

(Standing ovation for TVR, Capitals players yell “speech”)

TVR: Hell of a win, fellas. It’s hard work to win these series and close them out. And we got a lot to be thankful for. And let’s keep it going.

Carbery calling out van Riemsdyk comes as the defenseman played with inexperienced first-round pick Alex Alexeyev during the series after Martin Fehervary was lost to a season-ending knee injury. The Capitals outscored the Canadiens 3 to 1 at five-on-five with TVR on the ice. The Caps also posted respectable five-on-five numbers in shot attempts (67-69), but were dominant in scoring chances (37-28) and high-danger chances (20-6), posting an expected goals percentage of 65.04.

TVR also skated seven minutes and 12 seconds on the penalty kill in the five games.

After Carbery completed his speech, he gave the floor to Andrew Mangiapane, the previous winner of the team’s game puck award. Mangiapane earned the honor after scoring the game-winning goal in Game 4.

Andrew Mangiapane: A lot of players really played their hearts out, but you got to go with, I think, maybe LT here.

PLD: Oh yeah!

(Several players begin booing including Aliaksei Protas. Ryan Leonard puts his arms up like ‘what the heck?’)

(Andrew Mangiapane and Thompson hug)

(Thompson walks up to the Stanley Cup board to place the fourth game puck in.)

The Caps locker room in unison: “Hey!, Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!”

(Thompson puts the puck in the hole, but it falls out.)

Entire team in horror: OHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

(Thompson replaces the puck in the divot)

Capitals locker room: YEAH!!!

Thompson, who returned from an upper-body injury to start all five games of the series, posted a record of 4-1 with a 2.23 goals against average and a .923 save percentage. Among playoff goalies who played in five games or more, Thompson posted the second-best five-on-five save percentage, 0.938, and the fifth-best high-danger save percentage, 0.857.

“He’s a rock. He kind of did what he did all year,” Dylan Strome said of Thompson to reporters. “We feel really confident with him back there. You see their goal tonight, it’s like a deflection midway up the guy’s chest behind his glove, so it’s one of those just a lucky, lucky bounce to go in for them… He kept us in it, made the big saves when we needed it.”

When speaking to the media afterward, Carbery credited not only Thompson, but all of the regulars that Caps brass were able to acquire over the summer, who have set them up for success in the postseason.

“Dewey, great tonight. Chychrun scores a massive goal, Dubois sets it up. It’s a hell of a play to get us up two and those guys, Logan Thompson, like, that’s the other part,” Carbery said. “What has changed? So, one: we find ways to win but (two) you also need a certain level of players that we were able to acquire and bring it and that’s a credit to our management and what they did in the offseason and there’s been stories read about the 10 days in July or whatever it is of who they were able to acquire and the moves they were able to make and that puts us in the spot we are today with Jackub Chychrun, Logan Thompson, Brandon Duhaime, go down the list, Pierre-Luc Dubois trade. So those guys have their handprints all over where we are today.”