Tonight, the Columbus Blue Jackets showed delayed effects of Tuesday’s five overtime marathon with a sluggish performance that was capitalized on by a more talented Tampa Bay Lightning team.
Per Natural Stat Trick, the expected goals were 3.36-2.1 in Tampa’s favor, which pretty closely matches the 3-2 final score. That doesn’t sound so bad until you look deeper and see that 1.38 of the expected goals for Columbus came during power plays in the first period. They managed seven shots on goal in those opportunities, but none found the back of the net.