The Washington Capitals lost to the Seattle Kraken 5-1 on Tuesday, getting throttled in almost every way by the Western Conference’s 10th-best team (by points percentage).

The Kraken outshot the Capitals 32 to 20, out-attempted them at five-on-five 53 to 36, and scored on Logan Thompson seven different times — though two of the goals were wiped off the board by officials.

Capitals alternate captain Tom Wilson called the game “a big wake-up call” for the team. Head coach Spencer Carbery went a bit further than that.

Carbery made the following comments after the game.

Transcript

Q. There seemed to be a drop off from the Edmonton game. What went wrong tonight?

Spencer Carbery: Yeah, I think right from the start, I mean, I thought we got outplayed in the first period significantly. And so, I don’t think a lot changed from there. I thought we were outplayed and just, yeah, extremely disappointed, extremely disappointed. I just thought we got beat in every area by that team tonight.

Q. Tom said that this should be a wake-up call for the group. Do you feel like that wake-up call maybe should have come already?

Spencer Carbery: Yeah, I mean. I understand what he’s getting at, like a loss like tonight, with where we’re at in the season and where things stand. But I feel like our guys have had a bunch of wake-up calls over the last couple of weeks at meetings and understand the significance of where we’re at. And so when you get outplayed like we did, I just, yeah, it’s not a good feeling what went on tonight.

Q. In the first period, you at least had some looks and chances. They seemed to just completely dry up there in the middle period. What was lacking offensively?

Spencer Carbery: Yeah, I would say this. Like, yeah, we do get three transition chances. The two-on-one Grubi (Philipp Grubauer) makes a save on Stromer (Dylan Strome). The one backdoor that goes through, back through, no doubt. Those are quality looks, but if you’re evaluating who’s carrying the play, who has the puck, what end is the puck in, it’s not close. So that’s where the transition chances are nice, and we don’t capitalize, but we have to be able to go toe-to-toe with the team and control some play and have the puck and be in their end and register a few shots. And that’s, yeah, that wasn’t tonight.

Q. This is almost two months now between being able to string together wins. Do you sense that?

Spencer Carbery: Look, that’s your guys’ job to evaluate where our team’s at and what it looks like on a night-to-night. I don’t even bother with that. What I bother with is how I’m going to help our group get better and perform at their absolute best, and our individual players. And develop those guys as best I possibly can every single day. So whether we’re good enough to whatever you want to evaluate, I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about how we’re going to win the next game, or how I can help our group put them in the best position possible to win the next game, and how can they improve tomorrow and the next day and the following day to be the best possible NHL players they can be.

Q. What do you guys need to do more of to sustain more offense?

Spencer Carbery: So much stuff that I could break down. I just think, yeah, they were so much faster in all three zones. I just felt like a quicker team than we were with and without the puck in all three zones. So you can start with the pace of play, our ability to move our feet and skate, and get in on the forecheck, and then reload and get it back, and then close in the defensive zone. So that was where I would start there, and then you can start to break down some of the X’s and O’s.

Questions are edited for brevity and clarity.