from Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post,

The Capitals have heard all about the potential pitfalls for the defending Stanley Cup champions: a slow start to the season, fatigue from such a long playoff run and greater injury risk because of a short summer to both recover and train. Defenseman Brooks Orpik, the only Washington player who’d actually won a championship before this past one, would advise his teammates to largely ignore those warnings.

“You hear a lot of people trying to tell you that you should feel a lot more tired than you actually are, so I think if you let that creep in, you can trick yourself into feeling it,” said Orpik, who also won the Cup in 2009 with the Pittsburgh Penguins....

“It’s no secret that that sometimes happens — you go from playing on the biggest stage, you play the biggest game in your life and then you have an offseason and then it’s Game 1 again,” forward Tom Wilson said. “We’re all human, that’s normal. But I think with our group, no matter what, whether it’s the last game of the Stanley Cup, or Game 1, we love to win. That’s what separates us. We’ve had that mentality the last couple of years, super fun group. I’m expecting us to get out there and pick up where we left off.”

more