Daniil Tarasov made 17 saves for the Blue Jackets (31-27-8), who have lost three straight and five of their past six. They have been shut out in three of the past five games, including 4-0 to the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday.
“I'll be honest, there was some frustration at the end. Like you could tell that we were frustrated,” Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason said. “And when you get frustrated, you kind of throw some blame around and we haven't done that, right? We’ve stuck together and that's what our message was after and will be again moving forward.”
Lafreniere opened the scoring at 1:43 of the first period. Blue Jackets defenseman Damon Severson lost the puck to Mika Zibanejad left of the net. Tarasov went to poke check the puck but Zibanejad managed to slip a backhanded pass to an open Lafreniere for the easy score into the open net.
“It was just kind of a bit of a cluster of bad things that could happen there,” Severson said. “So, yeah, bad bounce there.”
Evason saw it another way.
“We need one of those to come our way, but we have to work towards that as well,” he said.
Panarin made it 2-0 at 11:36 of the second period when he skated in from the left wall and sent a wrist shot past Tarasov's blocker from the left circle. He has 12 points (six goals, six assists) during an eight-game point streak.
“We're getting down the stretch here,” Blue Jackets forward Adam Fantilli said. “I mean, guys are starting to tighten it up defensively. Doesn't matter. We’ve got to create our own chances and score. We had a couple and didn't bear down on them.”