Caps feeling blue, jacketed

I wasn't able to watch the Caps game against the Blue Jackets the other night; I didn't realize, in advance, that it was on Comcast's secondary channel, and didn't realize until after I'd put the kids to bed (and done a couple other things, I think).  So I turned it on just in time to see the last 45 seconds or so, with the Caps trying frantically to reduce the embarassment of the 5-1 score.

I went looking through the stats, to see if there was any saving grace to the score, and there really wasn't.  Gru had a terrible night, and Holtby was merely good in relief.  But possession was heavily in favor of Columbus, no matter how you want to measure it.

Actually, one thing about it was really weird; overall Fenwick was just about even until Columbus scored its third goal.  That's usually when the team losing starts picking up some steam (since the team leading is focused more on holding its lead than extending), but it appears that the Caps gave up at that point.  Fenwick was 21-19 (in favor of Columbus) at that point.  It was 26-16 the rest of the way (and that's giving the Caps credit for their last five, which all happened after Columbus seems to've stopped trying to score).

So there's really nothing good in the game.

The power play didn't score in almost eight minutes, though they did get eight shots on net (and attempted five more).  That's not terrible, but not great, either.

The PK allowed eight shots (and three more attempts) in just over six minutes, with two goals (and a third goal was scored three seconds after OV got out of the box, before he could get back into the play).

Bob, obviously, had a great game, stopping twenty-six of twenty-seven, but they really needed to send more pucks his way.

Erat finally escaped purgatory for the game, and got an assist on Carlson's goal (as near as I can tell, he was on a line with Backstrom and Brouwer, although I don't know the rest of the lineup shifts (except that Volpatti sat out).

One thing I can't figure out is that Erskine and Carrick again got a lot more D-Zone faceoffs than Green and Orlov.  I get that Green and Orlov are the best in the offensive zone, but they're also the best at moving the puck up the ice.  They're also much more defensively responsible in their own end.  But the faceoff numbers for the defensemen make it look like there was a lot of shuffling from the combos we've been seeing, lately (Erskine had 7 D-zone draws, for instance, while Carrick had only three).

I'm not sure where all that leaves us, except hoping that things work a lot better this evening against the Rangers (and thinking it's very unlikely to be Gru getting the nod tonight; not sure where to bet between the other two).  Go Caps!