Blue Jackets find a way to stave off a skilled Penguins team

Two Blue Jackets made their season debuts for the Union Blue tonight, and boy were they needed. Damon Severson scored and assisted on Mathieu Olivier's goal to give the CBJ their own two goals in regulation against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday night, but the two tallies weren't enough to solve their Metropolitan Division foe in regulation time.

Thankfully, a new NHL record holder backstopped them to a victory in extra time. Cam Talbot became the first netminder in National Hockey League history to play for nine different teams across a career as soon as the puck dropped from the corner of Front and Nationwide tonight. He went on to stop all three Penguins shooters in the eventual shootout tonight as well, and the Jackets would win off the back of Kent Johnson's shootout goal, the only out of six shooters.

For most of the game tonight, the CBJ were, frankly, dominant. Per Natural Stat Trick, they led in every single advanced statistic metric, even almost doubling the Tuxedo Chickens in Corsi For %, Fenwick For % and Expected Goals For %. Glaringly, the Union Blue posted an expected 4.61 goals for vs. the Penguins' 2.12. The Jackets finished the night with 45 shots on goal to just 22 from Pittsburgh.

However, as the Penguins tend to do, they found ways to make it interesting, advanced stats notwithstanding.

After the Jackets controlled the pace of play and scored twice off the back of the two from Damon Severson and Mathieu Olivier, a bad Cole Sillinger turnover at center ice led to a surprisingly speedy Bryan Rust getting behind the CBJ defense and sending one past Cam Talbot before the rest of the CBJ's skater could get back to aid on defense.

The Tuxedo Chickens added another in the third via Evgeni Malkin, albeit in controversial fashion. Erik Karlsson floated a shot from the point that bounced off a few bodies in the slot before trickling past Talbot, bouncing around like a pinball at Pins Mechanical down the street.

Talbot was slashed by a Penguin in the chest and had his glove covered on the same play, and it looked as if the Jackets could have some shaky ground for a possible netminder interference review. After a timeout, however, they elected not to challenge, with Head Coach Rick Bowness later describing that the call was 50/50 at best.

No further scoring took place in the third, and the game made its way to overtime, and then ultimately the shootout in which the Jackets secured victory.

There was plenty to like tonight for a Jackets team that hadn't played in nearly a week since their 4 to 1 drubbing at the hands of the Utah Mammoth, but also certainly more the team will want to have cleaned up heading into their back to back with the St. Louis Blues from the Gateway to the West tomorrow night.

Social predictions?

As usual, we asked for your predictions on Twitter/X and Facebook yesterday. Peter Hopey took the low hanging fruit on X:

It's worth noting that Adam is sitting at 80.4% at the faceoff dot through three games this season. Meanwhile, Jonathan Barnes was the only one we saw predict two points from Damon Severson:

Finally, over on Facebook, Chris Hughes predicted the final score. Well done, and thanks to all those who took part!

The Jackets likely should have won this game going away, but didn't, and yet still came away with two points, and against a divisional foe. They'll look to keep it up tomorrow.

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