Caps Come up Empty in Columbus

Generally speaking, an NHL goaltender that pitches a shutout is an automatic choice for the game's No. 1 star at night's end. That's not always the case, though; maybe a teammate or two has a huge night offensively or maybe the goaltender had an easy night of it and he gets relegated to second or third star status.

On Tuesday night in Columbus, Blue Jackets goalie Sergei Bobrovsky and his teammates blanked the Capitals 3-0 in what was a 1-0 game with four minutes remaining in the third. But aside from the final few minutes when he had to punch in and make some saves, Bobrovsky had a relatively easy night in net against division rival Washington. He had to make only 20 saves, and was required to make just seven of them over the game's first 40 minutes.

Anthony Duclair scored the Blue Jackets' first goal of the game - and the only support Bobrovsky would require on this night - on an odd-man rush at 6:32 of the second period. Bobrovsky was the game's No. 2 star, taking a back seat to Duclair.
"We just got outplayed the whole night," says Caps defenseman Brooks Orpik. "It was nothing more than that, to be honest with you. Same old story with the penalties. Especially on a back-to-back night, that just wears you down and takes a lot of energy out of you."
Washington was shorthanded four times on the night - twice in the first, once in the second and once in the third - and they killed them all off without incident. Three or four shorthanded missions are to be expected on a given night in the NHL, but taking two in the first didn't help when the Caps were playing for the second time in as many nights. The Caps had only one abbreviated power play of their own, and that came in the third. They simply didn't have the puck enough or work hard enough to draw more.

"We're a step behind and what happens when you're a step behind is you end up using your stick," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "We were on the wrong side of some battles today, and we used our stick to defend and those are penalties. That's an important part of game management in a back-to-back situation where the other team is fresh. That's difficult to overcome and when you have to exert all of your energy trying to kill off penalties. As a result, we weren't able to generate much five-on-five."
Caps goalie Braden Holtby did everything he could to keep the Caps close. He is the only reason Washington was still only a goal away from tying the game after 56 minutes of play. For the third time in his last nine starts, Holtby turned in a solid performance, but got nothing in the way of offensive support. Until Nick Foligno scored with 3:47 left in the game to make it 2-0, Holtby had stopped 29 of the 30 shots he faced.
According to naturalstattrick.com, the Caps meandered their way through Tuesday's game without generating a single high danger scoring chance. We don't agree with that assessment; Jakub Vrana had a good look from in front off a feed from Nicklas Backstrom late in the first. Dmitry Orlov had a good rush chance from the slot about five minutes into the second, and he missed the net entirely on a clapper from the hash marks late in the second.
Devante Smith-Pelly hit iron twice, and the second of those incidents - on a 2-on-1 rush in the third - was as good a chance as the Caps had all night. But that was about it, and that's rarely going to be enough in the NHL these days. Bobrovsky wasn't tested much.
Give the Jackets some credit, too. They played the way you're supposed to play against a team that played and traveled the night before. They quickly sapped what little energy the Caps brought into the building and gave them nothing to feel good about or to build upon all night long.
In the first period of Tuesday's game, the Caps had four shots on net, and they were held without a shot for more than nine minutes at one point. Three of those first period shots came from Orlov, and none of those qualified as genuine scoring threats.

Washington managed only three shots on net in the second, and at one point the Caps had one shot on net in a span of exactly 19 minutes, a stretch that started early in the second and ended when they managed a shot on their only power play chance of the night, an abbreviated opportunity early in the third.
At the end of the second, defensemen had accounted for five of Washington's seven shots on net. The Capitals had far fewer shot attempts at that point (16) than the Jackets had shots on net (24). Washington went into the third period down just a goal, but it felt like a bigger hill than that.
More than a third - seven of 20 - of Washington's shots on net for the night came in the game's final four minutes, after Foligno's goal made it a 2-0 game and before Artemi Panarin's empty-netter with 9.9 seconds left, a classic case of too little, too late.
Holtby was the only reason the Caps had a chance to steal a point or two in Tuesday's game, but Washington didn't do nearly enough to help its own cause.
"We didn't really deserve to be in that position, honestly," says Orpik, "so we probably got what we deserved."