JUNKIES: Nic Dowd dishes on his crazy assist against Vegas, penalty-laden game against Jersey
Nic Dowd is +2 with one assist in the Capitals' first two games, in which they went 1-1, and they're back on the ice tonight against Dallas, with coverage beginning at 6:45 p.m. on The Team 980.
Dowd joins the Junks every Thursday this season, and in his first in-season visit, he had to have some fun with his first point of the season, a swat of an assist on Jakob Chychrun's ridiculous goal to close out the scoring against Vegas.
"Thank God Chick has good hand-eye, because, I mean, if there's any indication of that's how I pass to my teammates, it must be tough to play with me," Dowd laughed. "It was nice to see him get his first, that's always nice as a new player on a new team. It's not something I think that too many people stress about, but it's always nice to get it out of the way."
Better than the season-opener, when he served two trips to the sin bin for penalties he just couldn't argue.
"The two penalties that I took, one was a trip where you're just like, 'okay, yeah, that was a trip,' skate over the box and really have nothing to say, and the other one was a high stick, which you can't really say anything about that either," Dowd said. "I think it depends on the penalty, but those two, kind of just immediately skated over, sat down and took a breath and tried to calm down. I knew the boys would get it done on the penalty kill. But if it's one where it's kind of a borderline call and you feel like the referee may have made a mistake, you gotta yell at him first and then you get to the box and you're probably still steaming pretty good."
The Capitals improved a lot of things between the season-opener with the Devils and the win over Vegas, but for Dowd, the key was communication.
"Compete and communication was something they touched on (after the opener), and I thought that one, being our first game of the season, we're playing with a lot of new guys, that's the first time we played with basically with that entire lineup all together, so you're trying to work through a couple of things," Dowd said. "Not using that as an excuse, but that was the Devils' fourth game I think, and I think there are so many plays where if we had just talked to each other…hockey happens so fast, and a lot of times you have to rely on other people's voices to let you know what to do, and I felt in the first game, a lot of us would watch things unfold instead of trying to communicate. I think that got figured out, and that led to better hockey."
Take a listen to Dowd's entire segment above, which also touches on his line's play overall in the first two games, his lack of other sports knowledge, and more!
