The Columbus Blue Jackets never gave up, but surrendered too many golden opportunities and fell to the Washington Capitals in Game Six. The reverse sweep ends the Blue Jackets' season.
Here are the thoughts of John Tortorella and company following the game.
John Tortorella
On the season ending in such a fashion...
"It's hard."
On the loss of momentum following the Capitals' third period response...
"It's tough to recover. They were pretty stingy, I give Washington credit for through the series how well they defended. We thought we might be able to get something going against them, they defended hard."
On playing from behind all six games...
"We chased it through the whole series. It's hard to play that way. We get in the playoffs by being able to handle those situations, but you can't go as many games as we did here chasing it. It affects how you go about some of your business with your lines in certain minutes of the game.
"The better team won. They made bigger plays at key times, our power play started well, faded a little bit, their power play got better which was a huge part going into tonight's game."
On Sergei Bobrovsky...
"I thought he took a step in the right direction here. I think you always have to be better. Not just the goaltender, your team, a number of people. That includes Bob."
On Washington's defense...
"They play a hard man-on-man, and when a team plays man-on-man against you you can try to get some separation. At times we did, a lot of times we didn't. They blocked some shots, they did a really good job on our power play on blocking shots."
On if the team expected to win during this series...
"Oh yeah. There was one game, and I still don't know why, in game four where it was just one of those games. And quite honestly I think I need to take the blame for that because I have racked my brain on what happened there. I think we should have stayed in Washington after that second overtime game, I think that comes back and gets ya later on."
On Pierre-Luc Dubois...
"Luc has handled himself very well. A nineteen-year-old getting pushed into the forefront here as far as being our number one center, and coming into this series against a team that's pretty deep in the middle. He handled himself very well."
On whether game three and game five's overtime losses will stick with him...
"Yeah. You have some opportunities, we have two glorious opportunities there and we just don't get it done. I look at those two games and we just couldn't get the next goal."
Nick Foligno
On the game and the series as a whole...
"I was fully prepared to talk about a win and start getting ready to go to Wash, so not really sure what to say right now. I haven't really dissected everything, but it was a good series. Four overtime games, I think we learned a lot about ourselves. I'm gonna be honest with ya I'm tired of learning, I want to continue to get better and continue to move on and I hope we understand that now is the time for this team.
"I hope guys understand and realize the windows you have to win too. This is a team we have in here that's a hell of a team."
On giving up two quick goals in the third after making it a one goal game...
"We talk about how you win. A team starts making a surge, you find a way to get the next one, keep 'em at bay, and they just kept doing it. We'd get some momentum and boom, they'd score. That was the difference in the game tonight."
On the effort from the team...
"I'm so proud of this group. I mean, you just don't understand how much work goes in here. You get to see a little bit of it, but the work that these guys put in, the dog days of the year, the group that we have here, how much we care about each other, I'm so proud to lead this team."
On special teams throughout the series...
"We talked about it. They have a good power play, and we needed to get ours going and make sure that penalty kill is great. Tonight our penalty kill was real good except for, obviously gave them one. Our power play just didn't get the job done again."
Seth Jones
On the fight on this Blue Jackets' team...
"It's been like that all season. We've been coming from behind all season, and we don't like to make it easy on ourselves. We find ourselves in the hole a lot in the last two, three months of the season, and we had to comeback and scrounge our way into the playoffs."
On what the team learned from this series...
"When you're up 2-0 you gotta figure out a way to get the third game."
