PITTSBURGH — In some sports, like football, coaches’ rah-rah postgame speeches are frequently recorded and shown on television broadcasts and reruns. They can be fun to watch.
If you believe Barry Trotz, despite all the celebrating the Washington Capitals got to do Monday night at PPG Paints Arena, his postgame speech wouldn’t be exciting TV viewing.
“From our standpoint, we haven’t had a lot of dialogue,” the Capitals coach said after his team’s series-clinching Game 6 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. “I’m just really proud of the group. They deserved that.”
There was a speech, for sure — Evgeny Kuznetsov alluded to it when speaking after the game. But whatever was said behind closed doors in the Capitals’ room, the players are happy for their head coach, who has made the conference finals round for the first time in his 19-year NHL coaching career.
“That’s unbelievable for him,” Kuznetsov said. “That’s special game for him for sure. He did a lot of good things in this league for so many years and, like what I said, it’s special day for him.”
What did Kuznetsov plan to say to his head coach when he got the chance?
“I don’t know,” he said in his typical fashion. “Probably like, congrats and make couple bad jokes.”
Trotz said he has felt a kinship with Alex Ovechkin, who also had never advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals in his 13-year career until now.
“I’ve been at this for a while and it’s so hard to move forward sometimes,” Trotz said. “It’s always thrown in your face everywhere you turn. I know it’s thrown in Ovi’s face everywhere he turns, and he’s a great player in this league. … It’s a hard league to get there. I knew the frustration because you’re so close and you just can’t get it, and you just gotta stay with it.”
Ovechkin has had to live through many more playoff failures with the Capitals than Trotz. But he would not talk about the past after Monday’s triumph.
“We believe in each other. The situation is it doesn’t matter what happened,” Ovechkin said. “We have to stick together. We knew it’s there. We just have to battle and we just have to fight through it. It’s a great feeling right now and we’re going forward.”
As head coach of the Nashville Predators for 15 seasons, Trotz’s teams made the Stanley Cup Playoffs seven times, but he didn’t advance to the second round for the first time until 2011. Since he took over the Capitals in 2014, Washington made the second round every season — and always lost, until Monday.
“I’ve been with this group for now four years and a lot of the core of this group was around before that. They probably needed to go through some of this,” Trotz said. “What I see is there’s growth, not only with our veteran players. … You saw young guys growing in these last two series. You continue to have these experiences good or bad, and we’ve had some bad ones, some painful ones and it’s made us stronger.”
Trotz and his staff have had difficult decisions to make this postseason. He chose to start Philipp Grubauer over Braden Holtby in net for the first two games of the first-round series against the Columbus Blue Jackets, because Grubauer had the hotter glove at the close of the regular season. It didn’t pan out, as the Jackets won both games, but Trotz reinstalled Holtby before it became overdue.
Then, the Capitals lost Tom Wilson to a three-game suspension. Trotz chose Nathan Walker to step in for Shane Gersich in Game 6 after Gersich played the previous two games. Walker, a rookie, proved Trotz a wise man by assisting the game’s first goal in his playoff debut.
Other players also credited the coaching staff after Game 6.
“Our coaching staff gives us a great plan every day,” Braden Holtby said. “That’s just a plan in place and in these games you gotta show up to play. You gotta find it in yourself to find a way to play and I think our whole room did that.”
“It’s great for the whole organization,” Jay Beagle said. “It’s great for the coaching staff that put in all the work. It’s great for everyone.”
• Adam Zielonka can be reached at azielonka@washingtontimes.com.
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