UNIONDALE, N.Y. – If the desperation of their current predicament had reached the Washington Capitals, they did a wonderful job cloaking it at practice Monday afternoon. Jay Beagle and Joel Ward conducted on-camera interviews with each other. Jason Chimera stepped into another holding a sawed-off stick butt as a microphone. Andre Burakovsky joked about the status of his locker, which was actually a folding chair next to the showers.
Here was a team confronting an urgent situation with laughs, meeting the prospect of returning home one loss away from elimination no differently than it had attacked any game during the regular season.