from Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post,

“For the last two years or so ... things haven’t come easy," goaltender Braden Holtby said. "That’s something that can be lost in the fact of winning. Because things weren’t easy last year. We had to grind our way through to get where we were, and that’s going to be what we have to do this year. We’re in one of those little lulls where we’re going to make sure that we come to work with the right mindset of putting it all out there and getting better and improving. It’s a time of the year where we still have plenty of time left to do the things necessary that we need to do to win.”

To Holtby’s point, the Capitals had a team-wide meeting in March last year, and that sparked a defensive turnaround en route to a franchise-first Stanley Cup. Coach Todd Reirden said that gathering included some significant changes to the team’s systems, which are still in place now. This meeting was just about pointing out where Washington is struggling within that structure.

“Some of the things that we’re doing incorrectly and mistakes we’re making, they’re big ones,” Reirden said. “We’ve got to go through those things as a group, players and coaches, obviously have video to back it up and ways we can get better. ... Right now, we’re going through a situation where we’re correcting some things and then other areas we’re not correcting and then those mistakes seem to be ending up in the back of our net right now."

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