Laich speaks his truth about Capitals

Fantastic Q&A with Brooks Laich via CSNWashington.com. Whether you follow or care about the Capitals or not, this is a quality read from a player who really tries to give an honest assessment of his team, what has been lacking, what has worked in the past and what might need to be done now.

Here's just a tease...

On whether Adam Oates gave his player too much credit by saying, “be a professional”:

"As a professional hockey player, I don’t believe that any one player should ever need to be babysat. You are the elite of the elite, you’re paid handsomely for it, and results are expected. If you want to be here long-term you damn well better show up and work. I don’t think a coach should have to come in and say, ‘C’mon, man. Can you do this for us, buddy? We’d really like it if you did this for us.’ This is professional hockey. There’s a million other guys right now that would love to be standing right here. So if my butt’s not in gear or somebody else’s, see you later. You’re out. I don’t believe a coach should ever have to pamper a guy and bring him along."

On former coach Dale Hunter:

"I honestly believe that the closest we've been to winning the Stanley Cup was with Dale Hunter [in 2011-12]. The way we played in that postseason, inside the locker room and on the ice, that was the closest that we felt. That was the best team that we had with the best chance to win the Stanley Cup. I honestly believe that we should have beaten the Rangers [the Caps were eliminated in seven games in Round 2] and from then on, who knows? I believe that we played with such a distaste for giving up goals [2.7 per game]. We suffocated teams, we defended so passionately and took so much pride in that part of the game and we found goals at the other end [2.6 per game]. But the team, the atmosphere, the culture, it was automatic and no one player was different from anybody else. As players, I think we have to get back to that. We have to assess ourselves as individuals. It's not a coaching thing, a general manager thing, an ownership thing. As players we have to take responsibility."

There's also a particularly revealing quote relating to how he felt the team was under Hunter vs. Bruce Boudreau.

"I believe we do know how to win. I don’t believe it has yet become our identity. If you are a student of the game and watch how the winning teams win it is robotic and automatic. There is never an element of losing control of the game or of high risk or of hope. There is a systematic way to win. I believe we discovered that under Dale Hunter. In the previous regime [under Bruce Boudreau] we would put up a lot of points, score a lot of goals, but some games we didn’t know if we were going to win them or not. It was a shootout and hope we have more bullets than the other team. We need to discover that identity of knowing how to win. Not hoping. Not just trying to win, but knowing how we are going to execute it as players. I believe we’re a little loose at times. We don’t know what we’re going to get, one way or another. We have to have an identity. A lot of guys do. Some people on our team are automatic. The third line, I could see it blind. Those guys are automatic."

Source: Chuck Gormley, CSNWashington.com

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