Postgame Hat Trick: Blue Jackets delight home crowd in win

Remember the narrative that developed midway through this season that the Blue Jackets couldn't play at home, that they would simply continue to perennially disappoint the fans when they showed up on droves to Nationwide Arena?
For now, fold up that narrative and toss it in the trash can.
Columbus won its fifth straight game at the corner of Front and Nationwide on Thursday night, and it couldn't come in a bigger situation. The 6-2 triumph over Montreal moved the team into the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, and with the tiebreaker and a game in hand on Montreal, the Jackets are in the drivers' seat to make a third straight trip to the playoffs.
And they did it in front of the 14th sellout of the season in Nationwide Arena, sending more than 18,000 fans home happy by scoring the final five goals. The crowd did its part, too, rising to a fever pitch as Columbus laid the body, piled up the goals, got timely saves and eventually cruised to the win.

"When you play at home, you feel the crowd," goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky said afterward. "They push you, they support you, they bring energy. You make a good play, they clap their hands, they make noise. It's fun. You feel that excitement and you kind of rise up a little bit more."
Time will tell where the season goes from here, but for one night, all was right in the place that Mr. Mac built.
Three observations about the victory follow.
1. Overcoming the start:But the natives could be excused for feeling a bit restless in the opening minutes. Montreal scored just 1:15 into the game and had the first six shots on goal before a long, harmless wrister from Cam Atkinson was parried aside by Carey Price a full 10:15 into the game.
So, uh, what happened there?
"I don't know," defenseman Markus Nutivaara said. "We just had a little bit of a slow start, and they came out flying more than we did."
"It was like we were in quicksand," head coach John Tortorella said.
It's been said the start has pretty much defined the Blue Jackets this year, who entered the game 30-7-2 when scoring first and 12-23-2 when ceding the first goal. But here's the reality -- that's about normal in the NHL, as only one team in the league (Tampa Bay) has a winning record when giving up the first goal. The CBJ's 13 come-from-behind wins when being down 1-0 is 13th in the league -- in other words, about average.
Anyway, the Blue Jackets did eventually find their footing and respond, playing solid hockey over the final minutes of the first to set up a three-goal second and three-goal third.
"I thought we started to get our feet in the game with about eight minutes left in the first period," Riley Nash said. "We started doing things that we regularly do. They came out really fast. They're a quick team, they're hard on pucks, but we had to establish ourselves."
2. Turnaround moments: David Savard's goal early in the second washed away the taste of the first period, but the real turning point of the game came near the midpoint of the second period.
First, there was the hit by Andrew Shaw on Adam McQuaid that knocked the Blue Jackets defenseman from the game. With Montreal on the power play, the Habs were attempting to enter the zone when Shaw cut across McQuaid at the blue line and put an elbow into the side of his head.
McQuaid dropped to the ice, and Shaw was given a minor penalty for interference and sent to the box. Tortorella was livid on the bench and later called the hit "ridiculously suspendable." Captain Nick Foligno was told by the referees at the time that in their view it appeared to be incidental contact, and with the speed of the game, we won't be too rough on the refs here. Either way, supplemental discipline may be upcoming.
But with Seth Jones already in the box and McQuaid now out, Columbus had to go into the 4-on-4 situation with just four defensemen, and Montreal took advantage when Jeff Petry cut to the net and flipped what looked like an innocent-looking shot on Bobrovsky. It deflected off the stick of Nutivaara, the inside of Bobrovsky's left pad, and went into the net.
It could have been a devastating sequence. Instead, Columbus scored twice in the next six minutes to take the lead then poured it on in the third.
"I think it's just a fluky goal, especially after our guy goes down, they score that one and it just ticked everyone off," Foligno said. "I loved our answer. We didn't panic. We didn't say, 'Oh, there goes the breaks.' We just kept going. We talked on the bench. Guys were like, 'That's not going to bother us. Let's get going.'"
Tortorella credited his team for the response.
"I don't think I helped them. I think they did it on their own," he said. "They just collected themselves, and we kept on playing. That could have gone another way."
3. What a goal:You couldn't help but think it when Matt Duchene and Artemi Panarin connected for the goal that gave Columbus a 3-2 lead in the second period -- 'That's what the Blue Jackets had in mind when they made the moves they did at the deadline.'

Simply put, it was a wonderful exhibition of skill from the two players. It all started when Nutivaara found Duchene on the right side, the weak side, with the kind of breakout pass the Finnish defenseman is becoming known for. It was similar to the March 16 game in Boston, when Nutivaara's long bank pass off the boards allowed Duchene to gain the zone, and the forward did the rest by scoring on an individual effort.
"I usually look for if there's any lanes to go weak side, and I saw Dutchy going here," Nutivaara said. "I remembered in the Boston game what he did, so I tried it again and it worked."
From there, Duchene did most of the rest. He made a nifty move to corral the puck and get into the offensive zone along the right wall, then pulled up at the half wall with Victor Mete on him. Duchene lulled the Montreal defenseman to sleep for a moment, then spun and cut back toward the net. The step he gained on mete allowed Duchene to get off a perfect backhand pass, which cut across the slot to Panarin low in the left circle, and the winger unleashed a one-timer from one knee that flew over Carey Price's blocker.
Elite players doing elite things, simply put.
"He's one of the best players I think I've ever seen on the cutback spin move off of guys," Foligno said of Duchene. "It looks like he's going one way and he's gone the other way. The guy doesn't have time to react. That's what happened on that play. Backhand pass across the ice to a wide-open Breadman -- that's as pretty as you're going to see this time of year."
Bobrovsky had a perfect view of the play from 180 feet away and couldn't help but feel good that it was happening on the other end of the ice.
"It's a pretty hard play," he said. "I thought Dutchy made a great pass with the backhand saucer. It's tough for the goalie to move from one end to the other, pretty much board to board. It's tough to move, and Bread had a good shot, I felt, too. So it's a good goal. I think there's nothing Pricey can do there. It's very tough. If he made the save, it would have been one of the best saves, for sure."