Despite a 5-3 victory at home on Saturday night to start the 2015-16 season, the Washington Capitals were far from impressive, according to head coach Barry Trotz.

“I’ll take the result,” Trotz said. “I didn’t like our first period. It looked like our team was a little rusty and hadn’t played. (The Devils) were playing at game speed and we weren’t. I thought we were very fortunate to be up 2-0 and we gave it right back."

The Washington Capitals are pegged to be a strong contender for the Stanley Cup this year. With Alex Ovechkin coming off another 50+ goal season, Braden Holtby a top-5 vote getter for the Vezina and the off-season acquisitions of T.J. Oshie and Justin Williams, this is the most well-rounded team that the Caps have had in years.

However, Trotz needs more from his guys, especially early on in the season, “… I didn’t like our overall game. Too many turnovers. It wasn’t a solid game for us, but the power play came up big for us and we had a big penalty kill as well in the third period.”

The Caps take on the San Jose Sharks (2-0) tonight at Verizon. The Sharks have had a great start to the season especially with newly acquired goaltender Martin Jones. The Caps will have to get a quick start in this game if they fend off a strong Sharks offense and get Jones shaky on his feet.

Braden Holtby, who did not have a great game on Saturday, also needs a good start. The Caps number one goaltender had some good saves against the Devils, but he'll need to do more for the Caps against San Jose. Once Holtby gets into a groove, I have no doubt he'll show the same brilliance he displayed last season.

Holtby stopped 21-24 shots on Saturday, including a Adam Henrique break-a-way that could have changed the momentum of the game had Henrique scored.

Barry Trotz also said, of Saturday's game, is that he wants more out of his fourth line. Brooks Laich, Michael Latta and Sean Collins were a combined -2 against New Jersey. They drew some penalties, but also took a couple and were not sharp enough to hold back a Devils offense that took advantage of some sloppiness.

“They have to be (even or plus) or they’re not a good fourth line,” Trotz said. “That’s plain and simple. The reason I put them out there is because I thought they were outperforming another line. They had back-to-back really good shifts, I put them out a third time and they get scored on. I want a fourth line I can trust to throw into the defensive end so you don’t have your more offensive guys starting 200 feet from the goal all the time. That’s something they’ll have to fix. If they can’t we’ll try to fix it with other personnel.”

Sharks and Caps drop the puck at 7pm.

More to come...

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