John Tortorella was in fine form after his Columbus Blue Jackets put forth a disappointing effort Thursday night and lost their second consecutive game to the Washington Capitals.
“We weren’t good. There’s no sense asking me things about the game,” Tortorella told reporters following the 4-1 loss. “I’m telling you, we laid an egg, so I’m not going to break it down for you. We sucked. We sucked. So let’s move by it and see if we play better Saturday afternoon.”
Tortorella thought his team played nervous. They only fired 24 shots at Capitals goalkeeper Braden Holtby and few of those shots were quality scoring chances.
“For some reason, you could see it from the first shift, right into our early power play. We looked nervous, right on through. I don’t know why,” Tortorella explained. “We had problems making plays. Period. Your transition game’s not going to work if you can’t make a play. It was just a struggle. That’s called a good old fashioned laying an egg. Right on through our lineup. It was unexpected.”
“I don’t need to say a word to the team about what happened tonight.”
Blue Jackets forward Artemi Panarin agreed with his coach that nerves were a factor.
“I had a feeling that we were a little bit nervous,” Panarin said. “I had a feeling that the puck was jumping all the time.”
It was a one-sided game in a series that, up until Thursday, was as close and competitive as it gets. In fact, Thursday’s game was the first time the teams didn’t require more than three periods to settle things. The Blue Jackets took each of the first two games in overtime on the road before the Caps got back in the series with a double-OT win in Game 3.
Game 4 was a different story, though, as the Blue Jackets were flustered throughout much of the contest.
“Athletes know when they’re struggling as a group and the biggest thing I was fighting with them, just to tell them, ‘cause you could see we started getting frustrated and yapping at the other team and just the whole demeanour coming to the bench, you could see we were losing our composure,” Tortorella said. “We can’t go down that road. It’s a series. We did not have a good 60 minutes tonight, but we’re not down in the series. So, wipe it clean. It’s a three-game series now. I just don’t want them going down the road of tying themselves up even more. They’re good players. We’re a really good team.”
Tortorella could be seen at times trying to calm his players down on the bench, but it didn’t seem to have an impact.
“I want them to have fun,” he added with a chuckle. “If you can’t have fun now—the human mind, I wish I could peel it and see what’s going on. We were like robots tonight and it’s very unlike us. We’ll bounce back.”
The pivotal Game 5 takes place Saturday at 3 p.m. ET in Washington.
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