Winning Thoughts: Blue Jackets respond to challenge, down Lightning

After CBJ wins, we'll give three takeaways about what stood out or what we'll remember from the Blue Jackets' victory.

BLUE JACKETS 3, LIGHTNING 2

1. The Blue Jackets delivered a strong response after a lackluster effort Thursday night.

There were no excuses – the Blue Jackets knew their compete level wasn’t where it needed to be two nights ago when they dropped a 4-1 final to Colorado at Nationwide Arena.

The CBJ coaching staff reinforced that message with a hard practice Friday, but the reality is the coaches probably didn’t have to. The push to be better came from the players on the ice; as Mathieu Olivier said Friday after practice, “We handle it like men and we get back tomorrow.”

Columbus did just that, delivering a pretty comprehensive 60-minute performance against the Lightning. Tampa Bay did hold a 2-1 lead for the latter stretches of the first period and early parts of the second, but the Blue Jackets were the better team for most of the night, outshooting the Bolts by a 31-19 margin and having a decisive edge in offensive zone and possession time.

“Honestly, (the players) were looking for it,” head coach Dean Evason said of the team’s better effort. “We did some stuff yesterday to engage them in that or make them aware of it, yeah, but I think they were accountable, which is what you want, right? It’s one thing for coaches to talk and yell and point out things, but it’s another thing for them to understand it and be accountable for what happened. And they did that.”

The Blue Jackets weren’t fazed when the Lightning scored twice in a 3:40 span in the first to take the 2-1 lead, carrying play for large stretches of a second period in which they outshot Tampa by a 14-3 margin. There was another moment where the Blue Jackets could have folded, as it came when a tying goal by Dmitri Voronkov at 11:09 of the frame was wiped out by a Tampa offside challenge.

Columbus could have felt sorry for itself considering it was the third disallowed CBJ goal this season, but the Blue Jackets stuck to the plan and got the tying goal from Damon Severson less than three minutes later.

“We’ve talked about our team’s composure in those situations,” Evason said. “It probably would have been easy for them to say, ‘Oh, again, another negative situation against us,’ or turn negative, but they didn’t. So there’s a lot of leadership qualities within there.”

2. Kirill Marchenko did what great players do with his third-period, game-winning goal.

After Marchenko turned in a 31-goal, 73-point season a year ago, it would be easy to call him a star in the NHL. Now that he’s become the first CBJ player ever to score five times in the first five games, is he starting to reach superstar status?

Marchenko has been dangerous just about every time he’s been on the ice this season, and he delivered a clutch goal again tonight just 1:15 into the third period to break a 2-2 tie. With the Blue Jackets racing up the ice with numbers, Dmitri Voronkov took a pass from Zach Werenski, pulled up at the blue line and hit Marchenko as he entered the zone.

Shielding the puck from the backchecking Gage Goncalves, Marchenko settled the puck on his backhand, switched it to his forehand to evade Brandon Hagel, cut right and fired past goalie Jonas Johansson before he could get set.

“We go 4-on-3, I think,” Marchenko said. “It’s a great play by Voro and a good pass for my backhand. I had to close my eyes and shoot. It’s all I did there, every time, and it works. There was one guy behind me, and I try to not let him go around me and just protect (the puck). After that, I have the puck and try to shoot it. It’s simple.”

With his fifth goal, Marchenko is tied for fourth in the NHL, and it’s becoming clearer by the day that’s truly a force to be reckoned with in the league. The tally was also his 80th as a Blue Jacket, moving him into 10th place all alone in the team’s all-time goal scoring chart.

But for Evason, the biggest barometer of Marchenko’s growth is that he was on the ice late in the game with the Blue Jackets protecting a lead.

“You’ve seen probably at the end, he was on the ice to defend, and we need him to use his skill set in all different areas defensively,” Evason said. “We want him to score goals, which he does, but we need him to continue to have that competitiveness, that two-way game that he can be on the ice in all situations. He’s done that, and he’s getting rewarded obviously with goals as well.”

3. The Blue Jackets also stuck together in more ways than one.

Physicality can be a funny thing in hockey. You do want a team that can lay some hits and make it tough on the opponent, but you’d also rather be the team with the puck than the one hitting.

Sometimes, a team’s ability to dictate play with the body comes down to some other measuring sticks, like winning puck battles and defending one another when the need arises.

The Blue Jackets checked all those boxes in the win vs. the Lightning as well. A tone was set in the opening minutes, first just a minute into the game when Voronkov and Boone Jenner stepped up to back up Kent Johnson in a tussle by the team benches. Two minutes after that, Mathieu Olivier dropped the gloves against Tampa’s Curtis Douglas in a fight you could have anticipated going in.

It’s no surprise Olivier took the challenge, but it bears mentioning he was giving up eight inches to the 6-foot-9 Douglas. Nevertheless, the two stood swinging toe-to-toe for a few seconds before Olivier got the takedown on the bigger foe.

“I know Ollie is known for being able to throw his weight around, throw the fists around a little bit,” Severson said. “He does a great job for us every time he does it and gets us going. And then obviously Booner stepped in there for KJ. ... It’s a team effort for sure, and you can see we’re really coming together again.”

That camaraderie even lasted until after the final whistle. As the horn sounded and Blue Jackets players started to celebrate the win, Hagel shot the puck toward the goalie Jet Greaves and the CBJ net, a no-no in the hockey world.

The Blue Jackets immediately stepped up, with Provorov going after Hagel and Olivier joining the fray as well, leading to a scrum that put an exclamation point on a fun night at the rink.

“I appreciate it,” Greaves said. “I think that just shows where our energy was here tonight, that togetherness and sticking up for each other the whole night. I really appreciate the guys having my back there. That was great.”