COLUMBUS, Ohio \u2014 For two months, they looked like world-beaters. Now, all of a sudden, the Columbus Blue Jackets don\u2019t look much like a playoff club.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, they couldn\u2019t keep pace against the San Jose Sharks. On Sunday, they blew a 3-0 lead and lost 4-3 in a shootout to the Boston Bruins. On Tuesday, they forgot how to kill a penalty \u2014 they\u2019ve had trouble remembering all season, actually \u2014 in a damaging loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets allowed three power-play goals, including a \u201cdouble-whammy\u201d man-advantage goal late in the third period, losing 5-2 to the Hurricanes before 18,293 in Nationwide Arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a little tough right now, but I think we need to just stay positive,\u201d said top-line winger Kirill Marchenko, who had a goal and an assist. \u201cWe have to look at the good moments and play our way. Don\u2019t change anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blue Jackets coach Rick Bowness and the players were overwhelmingly positive after the game, saying they played well enough to win \u2014 especially at five-on-five \u2014 and that Tuesday\u2019s game represented a step toward them regaining their mojo from earlier this month.<\/p>\n
But the Jackets played well only in fits and starts. Give them credit for working their way back from a 2-0 deficit to tie it 2-2 early in the third. But when Carolina dialed it back up, it dominated for long stretches.<\/p>\n
And, once again, the Blue Jackets don\u2019t establish physical play until the other club drags them into it. They were credited with 23 hits, but it was clear how much they miss third-line winger Mathieu Olivier, who is out for two weeks with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets are 1-4-1 in their last six games, including four straight losses (0-3-1). It almost defies logic that they\u2019re still in a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, but the out-of-town scoreboard was their best friend Tuesday.<\/p>\n
All three clubs chasing them for the second wild-card spot \u2014 the Philadelphia Flyers, Ottawa Senators and Detroit Red Wings \u2014 lost in regulation, leaving the bottom half of the standings unchanged for yet another day. The Blue Jackets play the Hurricanes again Thursday, but in Raleigh, N.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cTonight was a step in the right direction,\u201d Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski said. \u201cI thought our structure was good. The penalty kill kind of killed us tonight, but I thought we created a lot of offense five-on-five, and our power play got us some momentum in the second to get us going.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be perfect. How we were playing (a 20-3-4 run) \u2026 we\u2019re going to get back to that. But in these long stretches, when you go however many teams playing that well, you\u2019re going to have, unfortunately, some tough stretches.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually think we\u2019ve played better than maybe our record has shown the last week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam Fantilli also scored for the Blue Jackets, while Mason Marchment had two assists and goaltender Jet Greaves stopped 26 of 30.<\/p>\n
It was Fantilli\u2019s goal, an off-the-rush one-timer from low in the right circle, that tied the score at 2-2 at 2:07 of the third period. After the Blue Jackets left the ice to a smattering of boos after the second period, the Nationwide crowd was back and engaged.<\/p>\n
The game swung at 12:42 of the third, when Carolina\u2019s Nikolaj Ehlers carried the puck high in the zone, spun to his left for a different angle and fired the puck through a traffic jam and past Greaves.<\/p>\n
Carolina\u2019s Jordan Martinook was looming near Greaves when Ehlers\u2019 shot sailed into the cage, which put the Blue Jackets video coaches, assistant coaches and Bowness into action, looking at the replay to see if there was interference.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets wanted longer to look at it, so they spent their timeout.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ultimate decision is mine,\u201d Bowness said. \u201cBut I have enough faith in our video coaches, and that\u2019s why we took the timeout. We weren\u2019t going to panic there, so we took the time and took a good look at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat goalie interference is \u2026 you never know. There was contact twice (between Martinook and Greaves), once on (Greaves\u2019) feet and also on the glove. We felt that was warranted, so we could challenge that.\u201d<\/p>\n
An NHL coach could certainly justify challenging a go-ahead goal with only 7:18 to play \u2014 if this season has taught NHL fans anything, it\u2019s that goalie interference is judged by whim more than a rulebook \u2014 but Bowness had to consider something else.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets had already allowed two power-play goals in the game, and they\u2019re in a bad way with their penalty kill. They allowed two to Boston on Sunday and another to San Jose on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Also, the Hurricanes came into the game with the No. 9-ranked power play in the league. But Bowness had his reasons to justify a gamble at that point in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had killed the last two power plays,\u201d Bowness said. \u201cSo, we knew that if (the replay challenge) didn\u2019t go our way, we had just killed the last two. If we hadn\u2019t, then it never would have been called.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carolina won the replay challenge. And then the Hurricanes scored on the ensuing power play, with 6:05 remaining, to make it 4-2. An empty net goal capped the scoring with 47 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n
It marked the fourth time this season the Blue Jackets have allowed three or more power-play goals, but \u2014 strangely enough \u2014 the first time they lost in those games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe effort is there,\u201d Bowness said. \u201cGuys are putting it all out there, and that\u2019s all we ask. We\u2019ll live with it. We\u2019ll live and die with being aggressive. We\u2019ll live and die with that effort. It didn\u2019t go our way today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLUMBUS, Ohio \u2014 For two months, they looked like world-beaters. Now, all of a sudden, the Columbus Blue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5107],"tags":[194,29,5176,230,5,195,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-534585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-hurricanes","8":"tag-carolina","9":"tag-carolina-hurricanes","10":"tag-carolinahurricanes","11":"tag-columbus-blue-jackets","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-hurricanes","14":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116329214941601451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}