The Blue Jackets’ home opener Oct. 13 in front of a sellout crowd of 18,627 at Nationwide Arena was too much like their season opener.

A strong start produced no goals against goalie Jake Allen before the New Jersey Devils scored two power-play goals in a 3-2 victory to put a damper on the Blue Jackets opening celebration of their 25th anniversary season.

Timo Meier and Dawson Mercer scored the goals for the Devils (2-1-0), who got the winner from Mercer with 57 second left on an empty-net goal. Kirill Marchenko and Dmitri Voronkov scored goals for the Blue Jackets (1-2-0), who got 25 saves from goalie Jet Greaves.

Allen started for the Devils and made 25 saves before leaving the game prior to the start of the third period. Jacob Markstrom took over and made eight saves on nine shots to close it out. Voronkov scored with 20.1 seconds remaining to pull the Jackets within a goal at 3-2, but there wasn’t enough time left to tie it.

The game was almost a carbon copy of the Blue Jackets’ 2-1 loss to open the season Oct. 9 at the Nashville Predators. 

Just like they did in a frustrating 2-1 loss Oct. 9 in Nashville to open the season, the Blue Jackets dominated the opening period. They outshot the Devils 17-8, had 12 more attempts (28-16) and pinned the puck in the offensive zone for long stretches.

They just couldn’t get the puck past Allen, who stopped all 17 shots. At the other end, Greaves faced eight shots and allowed Meier’s power-play goal scored one second before Adam Fantilli was set to exit the penalty box after a hooking call.

The Jackets trailed 1-0 at the first intermission, but tied it 1-1 at 8:49 of the second when Marchenko created a breakaway for himself by swiping the puck from Devils star Jack Hughes and beating Allen for his fourth goal of the season.

New Jersey, however, countered with another power-play goal, making it 2-1 when Mercer one-timed a pass from Arseny Gritsyuk past Greaves with four seconds left in Cole Sillinger’s hooking penalty. That made the Blue Jackets 0 for 2 on penalty kills in the game and a horrid 7 for 14 (50%) for the season.

Blue Jackets reporter Brian Hedger can be reached at bhedger@dispatch.com and @BrianHedger.bsky.socialÂ