Michael D’Orazio believes work behind the scenes on Edinburgh Capitals‘ defensive unit was the key to Sunday’s 2-1 victory over Manchester Storm.
Second period goals by Mason Wilgosh and D’Orazio sealed an important win for the Elite League’s bottom club and ensured Storm’s weekend visit to Scotland ended with a third successive defeat.
“We played really well defensively – we’ve done our homework and we’ve started to do video breaking down our defensive zone because it’s been pretty bad this year, so we’ve been tightening up and staying sharp,” D’Orazio told freshair.org.uk.
“It goes to show when you win a 2-1 game and kudos to the guys, we played sharp the whole game.
“I just think we need to win games. We’re in a spot right now where this is the time to win games or we’re going to be packing our bags at the end of the season and not going to make the play-offs.
“The time is now to push and this is a big win for our team – obviously Manchester’s had our number this year so it’s good to beat them.
“Every team is beatable in this league, it is just consistency that’s a big thing. To be a good team you have to be consistent, you have to play the same game every night and hopefully we can build off this one.
“It was great penalty killing. I know our penalty kill has been struggling, been last in the league, so it is definitely an area we need to address but we started tonight, we worked hard and got in the lanes.
“You need a little luck too as they have an extra guy but we were prepared, we were blocking shots, we were sharp.
“Our powerplay has been struggling too, but as of late it’s been pretty good. The powerplay is there to win games and tonight it won us a game.
“We’ve had ample opportunities this year to win a game on our power play and we haven’t done it. The powerplay is a very important thing, you can win games that way and we did tonight.
“It’s a huge two points and we can’t afford to let up now – it’s a push to the end now for the play-offs. We can’t really play a bad game, the boys are focused and we’re ready to go.”
