After a nice run on the road, the Washington Capitals had a bit of a letdown game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, and they did it during our anniversary party, which was rude frankly.
Cam Atkinson scored first for the Blue Jackets, beating Braden Holtby on the near post. Ryan Murray was the beneficiary of Nick Jensen getting beat to make it 2-0 in the second period. Alex Ovechkin got a nasty backhander to crack the shutout in the third, but Columbus responded with two more goals — Nash and Bjorkstrand — to earn a 4-1 lead. Nicklas Backstrom in his big return, but Atkinson got the empty netter.
Caps lose 5-2.
Because we were so occupied with the party at Walters, this will be a light game recap. I wanna thank the great staff at Walters for having us, and for everyone who came to wish us a happy birthday. It was a delightful night, even if the Caps royally stunk for most of this game.
The top line got literally nothing going in the first period, the fourth line wasn’t their usual selves, and boys looked generally slow. Braden Holtby kept them in it for a while, and Alex Ovechkin got one nifty goal, but this was never going to be a good hockey game.
#joebsuitofthenight
thank you to @1bscarbro for hitting the button for this excellent Joe B pic pic.twitter.com/5CoUxdB1hl— RMNB (@russianmachine) December 9, 2019
I’ve been rapping about how the schedule is going to be tough for the rest of this month, but I wasn’t referring to this beat-up Blue Jackets team (Zach Werenski was out). The real tough stuff comes next — the Caps host the Bruins on Wednesday night. They’ll need to be a heckuva lot better by then.
Thanks again to everyone for being so sweet to us. I shared my thoughts at length on our birthday earlier today. I promise to be even weirder in the next ten years.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Blue Jackets
Headline photo: Julie from Puck ‘Er Up
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