Columbus Blue Jackets Survive Flurry and down Preds in OT
A wild third period forced overtime where Artemi Panarin and the Columbus Blue Jackets ended up victorious in overtime.
Well that was a heck of a day. The Columbus Blue Jackets went on a wild ride on Thursday starting with their Vezina winning goalie forced away from the team after an “incident”. With Sergei Bobrovsky out of the game, Joonas Korpisalo stepped in and it led to an impressive performance in net.
The Jackets, backstopped by Korpi, went on to win a 4-3 thriller in overtime at Nationwide Arena. The win extended the Jackets record on a Thursday to 13-0 on the fourth day of the week. Quite impressive and albeit random stat that continues on in 2019.
The scoring was opened early in the first on a Boone Jenner goal assisted by Josh Anderson and Zach Werenski. This was the first of many examples of how much this Jackets team missed the Foligno-Jenner-Anderson line. Although that line didn’t light up the stat sheet, they were the most dominate line tonight for the Jackets and set the tone for the game all night.
Columbus Blue Jackets
The second period saw no scoring but plenty of post. The Columbus Blue Jackets hit four post in the second which was nothing but infuriating to watch for CBJ fans.
The third period though is were the fun began. An offensive push by the Jenner line had the puck deep in the Predator’s zone. Nick Foligno was battling for the puck below the goal line with Mattis Ekholm when Ekholm laid a dirty cross check on Foligno.
The Jackets captain fought back to his feet while protecting the puck and the lined up Ekholm and laid him out. The legal check then led to a flurry of cross checks and slashes that lasted for about 20 seconds back and forth between the two squads. There was no doubt 10 penalties that could have been called on each team but out of the chaos the refs called just one, a slashing call on Josh Anderson.
That led to a power play opportunity for the Preds and although they didn’t score on the man advantage, they scored so shortly after the penalty that it might as well have gone down as a power play goal. The penalty was terrible, as was all of the officiating tonight and it’s something the league should look at tomorrow.
With the game tied at one the action opened right up. The Jackets would answer almost ten minutes later with a power play goal. You read that correctly, the Jackets scored on the power play!
Just eleven seconds later, Boone Jenner scored another goal and the Jackets seemed to have locked up the game with a 3-1 lead with less than seven minutes left in the game. Up to that point Korpisalo had been Korpi-solid and there was no reason to think that the Preds could come back.
Except they did and the Jackets gave up two goals in 32 seconds and the game would head to overtime.
Remember its Thursday, and an overtime game so there is no way the Jackets are losing. And they didn’t. Just a 1:22 into the overtime period and the Jackets scored on an Artemi Panarin power play goal to end the game.
The Columbus Blue Jackets jumped on the tired Preds and dominated the game for the most part. The flurry of goals in the third wasn’t ideal but the ability to bounce back against an elite team and win in overtime is a big positive.
The Jackets will take the two points and look forward to a big divisional rivalry matchup against the Capitals on Saturday in D.C.