After losing the first two games at home in their series with the New York Rangers, the Capitals are desperate for answers. So much so, that captain Alex Ovechkin was caught attempting to watch the Rangers practice at Madison Square Garden.
After just a few moments of observing, Rangers’ coach John Tororella asked Ovechkin to leave. The Rangers PR staff offered him a seat in the stands, but he declined, but clearly made a point with the obscure move.
When asked by Capitals’ beat writer Tarik El-Basir about the incident, Ovechkin clearly knew what he was doing.
“Just to get Tortorella pissed off,” Ovechkin said.
When asked why they made him leave, Ovechkin had another gem. “Because they afraid of me,” he said.
Capitals’ coach Bruce Boudreau played the incident off as an innocent mistake.
“I think it was more of a lack of knowing the rules, that’s all,” Boudreau said. “They asked him to leave; he left. He just went out there and he wants to be around the rink. I don’t think he had a pen and paper, writing down line combinations or anything, but I can understand, I’ve gotten into the same arguments with different people when I want privacy in my practice, so I can understand what John was going through as well. ”
When asked about it, Rangers’ coach John Tortorella avoided knowing anything about the situation.
“Oh, God, I didn’t even know,” Tortorella said. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. Ask me a question about the game, not that crap.”
How great is playoff hockey?
Phila.Bright 