Photoshop by me

Earlier this week, Tom Wilson tweeted an airplane selfie with several Capitals. It included the caption, “Elbows up everyone. Looking good @kuzy092 #lotsoftigers.”

I didn’t understand what Wilson meant by the hashtag #lotsoftigers, but I figured it’s probably an inside joke. I moved on. My life needed to continue to march on towards more blog posts about irreverent things. Then Wilson brought up tigers again Thursday.

“I think for me I’ve shown I can have the physical aspect of my game,” Wilson told CSN Washington’s Chuck Gormley before turning metaphorical.

“You can’t take the teeth out of the tiger. That’s always going to be my nature, to play hard and finish my checks. In the past I’ve been a guy that contributed (offensively). I played top minutes on teams. I’m still young but I think the expectation for me is to just keep climbing up on the roster and play more minutes and accept more and more responsibility.”

I love the attitude, but you can probably take teeth out of a tiger and Walter Palmer would probably be the best person to ask for help. So either Wilson equates a tiger to being a young hockey player with a bunch of snarl, or the sensitive winger has been staying up late watching too many nature shows on Discovery channel.

“I’m a third-year guy now and there’s really no excuses,” Wilson concluded. “I should be playing (meaningful) minutes and contributing to the team every night, whether that’s offensively or defensively on a given night. I just need to be able to play my role and continue to help the team. That’s the expectation and I’m not going to accept anything less.”

And hopefully with #lotsoftigers.