I know when you got four goals in one period that the initial reaction is to blame defense,,,but really there was nothing egregious they did to caused this. It was just one of those nights, with just a different bounce there could have been zero goals against. Graves kind of almost closed on Wilson but it was just the split of second release and even Jarry was in OK position, the other goal off Graves was fluke, the third goal was on Acciari letting his guy skate by and have open lane and Ovi's goal was as fluke as they come (Graves again should not screen his goalie but he is as dumb as a brick, not sure how he made it to NHL), they may have had one or two tops chances all night....It was more that our forwards did not deliver when needed, you have the whole third period to score one goal on a mediocre team...with two power plays and Caps killing that collapsed for blocks, they had a bunch a real bunch of pucks hanging around Kuempfer that may with a little luck ended up in the net. Also the forwards coming out in the first with zero intention to attack, just dumping to no one and sitting in the NZ...maybe thats good against Avs or some high flying good teams, but against rotten slow Caps that was a joke. Not sure it was by design, but they should never ever lose the game against these Caps. If they got scored on 10 times they should score 11.
Small points:
Bringing POJ to play with EK is disaster..I guess they will have Ludvig up there since Graves is just a mess.
Smith must go away from L2. It does not seem that Sully has any inclines to drop him down to third where he could try to work his way up, he may find better suited to play with eller.
Carter was beyond bad...unfortunately scored a few points during this stretch to keep im in forever, but he is just that bad.
These should be lines:
GCR
DOC G Rust
Smith Eller Puusty
Z Acciari Vinny