The pass tumbled through traffic and skipped across the ice like a rock atop a pond, so forward Tom Wilson dropped onto one knee and just tried to connect the puck with his stick. A 35-game goal drought had tugged at the 20-year-old, and later he couldn’t believe he had lasted that long without finding the net.  “Obviously it can be a little frustrating,” Wilson said, but all that disappeared during Sunday’s second period in Philadelphia, when he bent down and cranked the close shot underneath goaltender Rob Zepp’s armpit. As he raised one arm and twirled around in celebration, Wilson smiled. He could feel the weight coming off, in a way only scoring a goal can make it so.  “Oh, it’s night and day,” he said. “If you ask any player, confidence is probably one of the biggest things in this league. When you get into those games where you’re not scoring, and you’re looking at the schedule, going, ‘I haven’t scored in a while,’ it can be pretty tough. When that puck goes in, everything gets a little bit easier.”  Ever since getting scratched twice in three games, plenty more aspects of Wilson’s game have felt stronger too. At assistant coach Lane Lambert’s behest, the two of them began working together on puck-handling skills and shooting drills. A jammed February schedule had put practice time at a premium, with few instructional chances built in for a player who has logged more than 12 minutes just once since Dec. 18.  “Getting touches for young guys is key, so organizationally we talked about getting him more touches and if it’s not in the game, then we have to do extra stuff,” Coach Barry Trotz said. “We want to get his hands back to where he feels really, really comfortable. The best way is in practice. It’s starting to show. He’s taking pucks cleaner. You put in a lot of good work, it’s going to come back.”  Wilson agreed with Trotz’s observation, saying the puck has felt “a lot better” since he started working with Lambert following the Capitals’ season-long, four-game road trip to California and Pittsburgh.  “You get rusty,” he said. “Just going out there, working out the kinks, working off the rust, just getting those touches you missed during the game. During the game, I don’t really spend much time with the puck. When you’re playing nine, 10 minutes a night, it’s important to go out and practice that.”  But, while Wilson has already recorded more points than during his 82-game rookie season, he hasn’t moved up the lineup since getting dispatched into the basement following a stint with Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom. Trotz hasn’t wavered from his belief that Wilson’s heavy presence could stabilize that top-line right wing position in the future, but rookie Andre Burakovsky will likely start there Wednesday against Pittsburgh, and when Jay Beagle needed replacing in Philadelphia, Marcus Johansson moved up top, not Wilson.  “I’m still young,” Wilson said. “I was lucky enough to break into the league last year, get a year under my belt. If I stopped developing now, I don’t think that would be a good thing. I obviously want to keep developing, and hopefully got a lot of years ahead of me … In order to be an elite player in the league, you’re going to have to put in the work. Obviously I’m going to do that.”  Still, nothing beat the feeling of watching defenseman John Carlson’s pass hop across to the far post and cranking the puck past Zepp.  “You can get a big hit, you can get in a fight, you can get an assist, but you want to score,” Trotz said. “When you get in a little bit of a block, all you see is the goaltender, you don’t see the net. Getting the back of the net, there’s nothing like scoring a goal in the National Hockey League … I can’t give him confidence other than playing him. I can’t give him confidence that a goal, scoring a goal or making a great play can do for a young player.”  Alex Prewitt covers the Washington Capitals. Follow him on Twitter
Between pre-practice work with assistant Lane Lambert and his first goal since Nov. 29, the 20-year-old Wilson feels thing getting easier.