Idiotic penalties and blown leads: numbers for the morning after

April 13, 2018 6:13 am

An all too familiar postseason fate was bestowed upon the Washington Capitals by the Columbus Blue Jackets in Game One of the first round of the Stanley Cup loffs. In the Blue Jackets 4-3 overtime win, the Caps were plagued by stupid penalties, inability to make simple plays in dire times, and turtling that would make Donatello proud.

The Capitals out-shot the Blue Jackets 30 to 27, but were out-attempted at five-on-five 51 to 46.

The Capitals had a ten minute stretch in the third period where they did not record a single shot attempt. Seven minutes into that stretch, Seth Jones scored the goal that sent the game to overtime. The Caps can champion supposed shot quality in the offensive zone all they want, but the real issue has been in the defensive zone the entire season. The way they’ve closed out games this year is comparable to me trying to take a pizza out of an oven with my bare hands, but Philipp Grubauer and Braden Holtby have been there to hand me oven mitts. I’m very tired and angry, so let me know if that makes any sense whatsoever in the comments.
Andre Burakovsky and Tom Wilson are two players that I thought were having really good showings until they both decided to lose all brain capacity in key moments. Both took inexcusable, idiotic, dumb, stupid, etc. offensive zone penalties that led to two Columbus power play goals. Those mistakes fly in the regular season, but they can be utterly disastrous in the postseason.
Jakub Vrana played exactly six minutes of hockey five-on-five. That’s quite infuriating. Just a reminder that he was the only Caps player to create a goal at even strength.
The pairing of Matt Niskanen and Dmitry Orlov got completely torn to pieces by Artemi Panarin‘s line. Niskanen did not touch above 35 percent in either five-on-five shot attempts (34.9 percent) or scoring chances (30 percent).
#44 is the number of a player that is neither a crease clearer nor an NHL defenseman.