Ian and I have been discussing why web traffic is slightly down this season. He said the election could be a factor. I suggested that it’s hard to know the cause, but then I saw the Caps play in Columbus on Tuesday and now I know: This game was boooooring. Let’s talk about it.
First period comprehensive report with exhausting detail: Absolutely nothing to report.
Second period minute-by-minute breakdown: Nothing to report until Nick Backstrom ripped a simple, lovely shot through a slight screen to give us an actual score.
Third period debrief: The game got less boring but in a bad way. Zach Werenski cracked Grubauer’s shutout while the Caps’ mainstay Ovechkin-Beagle tandem was on the ice.
Rego ended without satisfaction. Cam Atkinson finished it in overtime with a quick goal off a faceoff.
Blooj beat Caps 2-1 in overtime.
- To start, the pace of this game was gruelingly slow. Like William F. Buckley singing Pedro the Lion on barbiturates. Just how John “NHL coach most likely to have been super happy about the U.S. election” Tortorella likes it. There were 28 shot attempts in the first period, just 11 on net for both teams.
- The second was more of the same until Brooks Orpik (who got smushed in the face by an errant puck during the first) committed a trip. That PK found Matt Niskanen and Jay Beagle pulling some big moves for shorthanded chances. Beagle drew a call and might’ve also woken his crew up.
- Fittingly for such a subdued game, it was wild man Nick Backstrom who broke through. After schooling the Jackets with some fancy stickwork, Backstrom beat Bob with a slightly screened wrist shot.
- Backstrom on his goal: “I was just trying to do something I don’t do too often: shoot the puck. It worked that time.” Jokes.
- You might consider it padding if I put a whole bunch of tweets in here, but this whole sequence was [kisses fingers]
Tom Wilson tells a @BlueJacketsNHL player to "shutup" pic.twitter.com/9OcJ7BIALo
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) November 16, 2016
rude
— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) November 16, 2016
nope, just you
— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) November 16, 2016
John Tortorella is your head coach
— Chris Cerullo (@CJC_95) November 16, 2016
- Chris “from the comments” Cerullo: Mad online since 2014.
- Nick Backstrom scored a ferocious goal to put the Caps ahead again in the third, but John Trollerella nullified it with a challenge. TJ Oshie got stick-checked along the blue line and was dubiously offside as he entered the zone.
- So, Lars Eller has more PIMs than games played. Is this a problem?
- Now, about the lines. Perhaps, in hindsight, the trio of Alex Ovechkin, Andre Burakovsky, and well meaning but pokey little puppy was not optimized for offense. As a result, they got trounced by a team that is startlingly bad at puck possession. I’m used to Beagle getting creamed in differential for 10-12 minutes of bottom-line time, but the promotion both exposes his weaknesses and dulls the effect of the more dynamic players he shares time with. More on this below.
Joe B suit of the night
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love Jay Beagle. I probably loved him before you did. Just not, ya know, for more than 15 minutes a night. The Caps have like 73 viable top-six forwards, but even Jay would and should say he’s not among them.
Then again, mustering concern about Caps forward lines in November is a bit too precious for me right now. The world is coming at me like a drunk frat guy waving a broken beer bottle at my jugular. I can’t pretend it matters much if the Caps play dumb lines against a team that ought to be relegated.
