The Capitals still control their own destiny for the NHL Playoffs, and as the push continues tonight against Pittsburgh, the Junkies joked to Dylan Strome that tonight (and every night here on out, perhaps) is the biggest game of his career.
Strome played in the bubble season playoffs but never in a true postseason,
“The last 10 or 15 have been all been pretty big, and yeah, tomorrow night will be the new biggest game of my career,” Strome laughed. “Especially at home, it feels like every game is even bigger. You're not expecting to win every game on the road – it’s nice to win games on the road and that's how you have a good season – but you can't be losing games at home. 5We obviously lost last one to Boston, and those games hurt in the standings, but tonight, playing against Pittsburgh, a big rivalry game and when it's at home even more so, we’re ready to go. Everyone's excited, and we know how big of a game it is.”
Strome has played on one side of several big NHL rivalries, but thinks Caps/Pens might be the biggest – so yeah, a little extra motivation tonight.
“I think anything compares really to this magnitude; the amount of playoff series that have happened with these two teams, with the superstars that each team has, I think it kind of separates itself as a huge rivalry like Rangers-Islanders or Leafs-Canadiens,” Strome said. “This is kind of like the newer age since Crosby and Ovi have been going head to head, so it’s fun to play in. We beat them pretty good last time, so I know they're gonna be pretty pissed off and ready to go tonight. It's a huge game for us.”
You also never know when the last Ovi-Crosby game will be, and given that every time they’ve met in the playoffs one has won the Cup, there’s a little extra juice there too.
“It's cool to be a part of the kind of the latter stages of it, and hopefully we can write somewhat of a new chapter tonight,” Strome said.
Washington leads the season series 2-1, and winning the series means a lot more than just that.
“First game of the year they smoked us 4-0 in our rink and I don't think we forgot about that, and we won the next two times in their rink, so to go 3-1 would be pretty good against them,” Strome said. “I think we're ready.
They're playing pretty good, we’ve had a couple game slide here, but we'll be ready to go and we know how big of a game it is for us. Like I said, it feels like they've been big for the last two or three weeks, ever since that kind of Seattle game where we kind of turned things around, so everyone's excited. I'm sure a loud crowd will be ready to go, and hopefully we can get a couple points and kind of leave some teams in our rear view with this win.”
Take a listen to Strome’s entire call-in above, which also gives his thoughts on the Rangers-Devils line fight, the wind-down of ‘goons’ in the NHL, and more!