I know you don’t want me to mention it, but after coming off a horrendous loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, the Caps practiced with a bit of a line shakeup. The shakeup includes the return of top line Jay Beagle.
Beagle took time after practice this morning to speak with the media and voice what he thinks this shake up means and also talk about what he has been working on over the summer to improve his game.
Beagle mentioned that he focused on trying to keep his hands light to create more scoring opportunities. Beagle told the media, “probably four or five years ago, I started doing some stuff that I had never done before in the summer. Just working on individual things. In the summer, when you start skating it’s usually with a group, so I just started doing my own individual stuff as well as the group skating in Calgary.”
Beagle has also noticed that the opportunities that he has created for scoring have been because of bounces. “A lot of it is bounces, I’ve had a lot of good bounces this year. You just have to keep working and I’ve had starts like this where I felt like I should have had a start points-wise like this but they just didn’t go in or they just didn’t happen.”
The full transcription of Beagle’s interview is below.
Video
Caps Forward Jay Beagle on practicing on a line with Ovi and the #CapsJackets tilt tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/UlmSB3uILx
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) November 14, 2016
Jay Beagle: I mean, they’re obviously really offensive but I think they have the best PP in the league percentage-wise. Vogs? Vogs would know. So we have a big task at hand, after a game like we had in Carolina, we want to come out and give our best effort and make sure that we can make a statement too.
You said you worked on some different things this summer, less fishing more snapshots, what were the things?
Jay Beagle: More fishing, more working on my light hands. You know, just that light touch. No, just a lot of shots. A lot of renting the ice all by myself and doing stuff that you can never do unless you’re by yourself or with one or two guys. Yeah, just trying to work on these brick hands.
This is the second time you guys have seen a big shakeup on the lines, what is the message that you guys take from that?
Jay Beagle: I think it’s just kind of a wake-up call. We need to start playing our best because this team is a lot better than what we’ve shown and the guys know it. I had said before, we know it before anyone knows it, when you’re game’s kinda slipping a little bit or little things here and there aren’t as tight as you want them to be. So, I think it’s just a shakeup and a wake-up call and the time is now to start going.
A very western heavy schedule to start the season, now you have these two back-to-backs with teams you’re clustered with in your own division. Does it add a little more importance?
It definitely does, you don’t want to let points slip to division teams. You want to make sure you’re playing your best and showing teams in your division this is how we play and we’re a heavy, fast playing team. Make it so they don’t want to play us. So, this will be a good test against a really good team tomorrow that works hard and plays good structured games. It’s gonna be a good one, it’s gonna be fun.
Was it what happened in the playoffs, for secondary scoring, that lead you to work on your hands more over the summer?
Jay Beagle: Yeah, definitely. Probably four or five years ago, I started doing some stuff that I had never done before in the summer. Just working on individual things. In the summer, when you start skating it’s usually with a group so I just started doing my own individual stuff as well as the group skating in Calgary. A lot of it is bounces, I’ve had a lot of good bounces this year. You just have to keep working and I’ve had starts like this where I felt like I should have had a start points-wise like this but they just didn’t go in or they just didn’t happen. So it’s capitalizing on opportunities, and like I said before, linemates are unreal.
