“He’s a rival now,” Tom Wilson THREATENS to make Erik Karlsson’s ‘life difficult’ in wake of 2023-24 regular season
Washington Capitals winger Tom Wilson talks about his rivals Pittsburgh Penguins as the 2023-24 regular season preps its start in October.
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Erik Karlsson and Tom Wilson [Image Credit: Bleacher Report/Stars and Sticks]
Washington Capitals forward Tom Wilson recently talked about their rivalry with the Pittsburgh Penguins in the wake of the 2023-24 season. In a recent interview with TSN Toronto 1050, he talked about the Capitals vs. Pens rivalry, pointing out who he chose as his foe this season.
Wilson named NHL phenom Sidney Crosby and star defenceman Erik Karlsson as his targets. The Pens and Caps rivalry is famous in NHL as both teams possess star veteran players who can also be considered league greats and generational players.
Wilson in a recent interview talked about how he is excited to faceoff against Crosby and Karlsson and take them down a notch. Especially with Karlsson joining the Penguins, the team has solidified their defensive side much more than before.
Talking about Karlsson, Tom Wilson excitedly stated that he’s ready to face him off and make his life difficult in their rival team. He called the 33-year-old defenceman “an elite talent” while stating “He’s a rival now, we’ll try and make his life difficult back there”.
Tom Wilson on Sidney Crosby: “He’s an all-time great player in the game”
![Sidney Crosby and Tom Wilson [Image Credit: HockeyFeed - Twitter]](https://firstsportz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Untitled-design-11-13.png)
Both the Pens and Caps possess talents rarely found in NHL. On the Penguins’ side, there’s Crosby, Kris Letang, and Evgeni Malkin, while with the Caps ‘The Great Eight’ Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, John Carlson, and many more.
The clash between these two teams always provides excitement among fans, even among the players themselves. Last season, both teams failed to make it into the Stanley Cup playoffs and made drastic changes in their management to avoid such a situation in 2023.
With Erik Karlsson joining the Penguins this season, the team’s defensive power has become one of the NHL’s bests. Both will be fighting tooth and nail to snatch a playoff spot this year. Although the match will be interesting to see, Tom Wilson is more focused on facing the Penguins.
He said that the team has been preparing for the matchup this season, “I think there’s hunger there” after missing playoffs for the first time in 16 years. Wilson noted that “it’ll be cool to have him (Erik Karlsson) be a part of that rivalry,” while talking on TSN Toronto 1050.
He further discusses the rivalry between the two teams while expressing his awe of Penguins captain Sidney Crosby. He talks about how he looks up to Crosby and the way he carries himself on the ice. “He’s an all-time great player in the game,” Wilson noted.
Although there hasn’t been any personal contact with ‘The Next One’, Wilson says that “he’s always been a pretty classy and well-respected player” in the league. Needless to say, there are numerous stories of NHL players looking up to Crosby as their star, including Oilers captain Connor McDavid.
With the trade and sign-up season going in full force, it’ll be a blast to see all the NHL teams fully packed with highly talented players facing off on the ice. Surely there’ll be team fans who will mostly look for a match-up, and one of them will undoubtedly be the Capitals vs. Penguins rivalry.
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Kaushani Chatterjee
(2193 Articles Published)