Labatt What We Learned: CBJ 4, CGY 1

The Blue Jackets did not start their last game, which they won, on time.
They were ready tonight - and got a little spark early on in the game.
For unknown reasons, Calgary rookie Matthew Tkachuk decided to pick a fight with Alex Wennberg and Wennberg did not back down. All the Blue Jackets did in the ensuing minutes was score twice to take a 2-0 lead, and those were the only two goals they needed to secure an eighth consecutive win.

Columbus is 19-5-4 with 42 points and keeping pace in the frenetic Metropolitan Division race, and tonight's win was the team's seventh in a row at Scotiabank Saddledome, where the Flames have been awfully good of late.
It was a game decided by a good start in the first period and then by special teams in the second period; the Blue Jackets scored twice in the first and added both a power play goal and shorthanded goal in the second to salt the game away.

Here's what we learned:
Wennberg…fights? Yes, he did. Not a minute into the game, Wennberg dropped the gloves with Tkachuk in response to a hard hit leveled on line mate Brandon Saad. There was a skirmish in front of the Blue Jackets bench, and in the middle of it, Tkachuk pulled Wennberg aside and it was on. Wennberg may not be the first guy you'd expect to drop the gloves (in fact, he never had prior to tonight), but held his own and his teammates loved it. Another guy who loved it? His head coach, John Tortorella.
"A great left, and then he switched to a right," Tortorella said with a wide smile. "I loved what I saw out of Wenny there. That's important for camaraderie and the tightness of a bench to see that. It's all good. I thought Wenny was probably one of our best players tonight, too."
"I'm not much of a fighter, but you have to stand up for your teammates and (fighting) was the first thing that came to mind," Wennberg said.
Special specialty teams: After the back-to-back goals by Jenner and Saad to open things up in the first period, the Flames answered back with a 5-on-3 goal from Sean Monahan to pull within one. They built a little momentum near the end of the first period, but the Blue Jackets regained control of the game with a textbook second period in which they rarely gave up the puck. Zach Werenski got the key goal on an early-period power play, zipping a seeing-eye wrister through a multi-layer screen set by Sam Gagner and Nick Foligno. Then Matt Calvert did his thing while shorthanded (his second shorthanded goal of the season), picking off a cross-ice pass at the blue line and taking off on a breakaway. With one quick move to his forehand and support from William Karlsson trailing the play, Calvert beat Chad Johnson five-hole to extend the lead to 4-1.
"We did a good job in the neutral zone, and just made simple plays and countered very quickly," Tortorella said. "Scoring the power play goal to get the third goal there, that was important."

A strong middle: Rather than the Flames getting a sustained boost from their power play goal and starting the second period with a big push, it was the Blue Jackets who stepped up and grabbed momentum. The Werenski goal came early in the period and he said he shot the puck because he felt they weren't getting anything going…and then they scored. The Calvert goal was an exclamation point on an impressive 20 minutes in which the Blue Jackets played hard through all three zones and drove play at even strength. They needed Sergei Bobrovsky to come up with a few key saves in the third period, but he only needed two goals of support tonight.
"We're going into every game with the same mindset: putting the past behind us and focusing on that game," Jenner said. "When you get results, it's encouraging, and you want to do it again."