FINAL: Blackhawks 6, Blue Jackets 5 (SO)

The Blue Jackets dropped a 6-5 final in a shootout to the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday night at Nationwide Arena.
Game in a Paragraph
In a wild game that had echoes of the 6-5 game played between the teams earlier this year in Chicago, the Blackhawks took leads of 2-0, 3-2 and 5-3 only to see Columbus keep clawing back, with the Blue Jackets tying the game in the final minutes. In the shootout, Chicago got the lone goal to earn the extra point in the standings.

Quote of the Game
Head coach John Tortorella: "I thought we started making some plays. I thought there was a little bit more flow to our game. I'm happy for them to get a point. We need to win some of these games -- had some opportunities, one of our better 3-on-3 periods. So there's a lot of things to point at to try to get better. We have a lot of work to do still, but at least we can point to some things that we took some steps in the right direction and try to do better."
CBJ Standouts

Quick Recap
Nick Foligno and Kevin Stenlund had early looks at Chicago goalie Kevin Lankinen in the opening minutes as Columbus got the first two shots on goal, but the Blackhawks had the next 17 shots attempts and used them to take a 2-0 lead.
Not surprisingly, Patrick Kane factored in both. Chicago opened the scoring 8:11 into the game with a power-play goal, as Kane's shot from the left circle was knocked down in front, where Carl Soderberg found the puck and slid it underneath the scrambling Joonas Korpisalo. The Blackhawks then made it 2-0 at 10:03, as Max Domi's clearing attempt hit a skate and went right to Pius Suter on a 2-on-0, and he made the easy pass to Kane for a drive past Korpisalo at 10:03.
But the Blue Jackets didn't need long to draw one back as an Atkinson goal made it 2-1 at 11:34. Boone Jenner pitchforked the puck ahead from his own blue line and Atkinson won the race to it and made no mistake with his finish, sliding it under Lankinen to keep his red-hot goal-scoring streak alive.
Then the Blue Jackets needed just 48 seconds of the second period to tie the score at 2. After Atkinson was taken down in the offensive zone to earn a power play, Jack Roslovic won the faceoff to Seth Jones, who teed up Laine for a one-timer at the top of the left circle that flew by Lankinen's far arm just seven seconds into the power play.
Columbus had a chance to take the lead 3:36 into the period when Bjorkstrand was tripped on a breakaway, leading to a penalty shot, but Lankinen waited him out and stopped his try. Chicago then had a goal waved off at 5:46 when David Kampf appeared to score but only because Matthew Highmore had interfered with Korpisalo.
The Blackhawks were able to retake the lead, though, at 8:12, moments after the Highmore penalty expired. It was again Kane who had a hand in it, as his shot from low on the right went high, but he recollected the puck off the glass and fed Brandon Hagel in front to beat the down-and-out Korpisalo to make it 3-2.
The Blue Jackets had the answer, though, on the power play with a goal by Laine. This one was a wrister, not a one-timer, as Atkinson fired the puck across the royal road to the Finnish sniper, who collected the puck in the left circle and calmly put a wrist shot past Lankinen short side this time to make it 3-3 at 9:24.
Chicago took its third lead of the night at 15:05, with Dominik Kubalik giving the Blackhawks a 4-3 advantage. After a CBJ icing, the Blackhawks won the draw and Kubalik's shot from the blue line sailed through a screen and beat helpless Korpisalo past the blocker.
Laine had a bid at a hat trick on his first shift of the second period but Columbus native Connor Murphy dove to block his rebound shot, and that proved crucial when a pair of CBJ penalties gave the Blackhawks a two-man advantage shortly thereafter. The Blackhawks took advantage, with Kane feeding Adam Boqvist for a one-timer that went under the bar to make it 5-3 at 3:37.
Yet again, Columbus didn't quit, though, netting a third power-play goal to make it a 5-4 game with 10:00 to play. It was Bjorkstrand who got it, taking a feed from Roslovic in the left circle and putting a one-timer past Lankinen low to the far side.
Bjorkstrand then got the tying goal as well with exactly 4:00 to go, making it 5-5. A dump-in was rimmed along the wall by Lankinen, but Laine knocked it down along the right-wing boards and found The Maestro in the low right circle, and his shot appeared to cross up Lankinen and go in the net to tie the game.
Each team had its fair share of looks in overtime, with the period ending with Lankinen stopping Bjorkstrand on two looks from the doorstep. That led to a shootout, where Alex DeBrincat scored with the first Chicago try, while Atkinson, Laine and Roslovic all came up empty.
3 Takeaways
1. 🤯 : Sometimes you just have to shake your head and be entertained, right? How do you even describe that one, the Blue Jackets' third (!) 6-5 final of the year and the second against the Blackhawks? Yes, some defensive issues remain, but you also have to tip your hat to a Columbus team that had every opportunity to hang its head in this one yet somehow kept battling back from deficit after deficit. Tortorella said his team was simply too uptight early in the game during a brutal start, essentially trying itself into knots, but some flow and some confidence continued to grow as the game went on. In all, you'd have loved to have left with two points, but you have to take this one and build on it. "One point is better than no points," Atkinson said. "I thought we did a lot of good things, especially toward the end of the first period, and then obviously at the start of the second period and in the third and found a way to crawl back into it and give ourselves an opportunity to win a game."
2. Powerful power play: Don't look now but as of this writing, after a 3-for-4 performance on the man advantage, Columbus is now 18th in the NHL with a power play clicking at 20.0 percent. OK, that's still not the top half of the league, but considering the team was at 1-for-19 seven games into the year, that's a vast improvement, with the unit converting on 9 of 30 chances (30.0 percent) since then. The obvious help has been the addition of Laine, who simply used his superhuman shooting ability to fire a pair of pucks past Lankinen. But add in Bjorkstrand's goal for the No. 2 power-play setup and the Blue Jackets now have a special teams unit that can change games. The team noticably seemed to settle down once Laine started going on the power play, bringing the Jackets back into the game. "It's a good sign for us," Atkinson said. "If there's a play made that was open, we were making it. It wasn't anything crazy, anything fancy. We gave the puck to Patty to shoot the puck and good things happen." Columbus scored three power-play goals for the first time since a game Nov. 23, 2019, at Winnipeg.
3. Big guns stepped up: We could break down some more of the defensive struggles, but at this point, it would be like a broken record. So let's focus on the positives -- the Blue Jackets got big games from guys who are capable of it, with multipoint efforts coming from Atkinson, Laine, Bjorkstrand, Jones and Roslovic. Tortorella has talked about how he needs to get more players going, and that's true, but this was a step in the right direction for the team's top offensive players. Of particular note was the night from Bjorkstrand, who had two goals and could have had more given the penalty shot and his chance late in overtime. "It definitely feels good, so now I want to build on that," said Bjorkstrand, who had fallen into what counts as a scoring drought for him with zero goals and four assists in the past seven games. His line with Laine and Foligno was certainly noteworthy as the game went on.
Notable
With his two assists, Roslovic has a 4-8-12 line in the last 11 games, while Jones had two helpers to give him a 1-9-10 line in the past 10 contests. ... Jones also played a career regular-season high 31:58. ... Gabriel Carlsson had an assist on the Bjorkstrand goal to give him two points in two games this year (1-1-2). … Kane now has 12 points in five games vs. Columbus this year (3-9-12) and a 22-45-67 line in 51 career games. ... After scoring first in 14 of its first 18 games, the Blue Jackets have gone down 1-0 in two straight games. … The Blue Jackets fell to 1-5 in overtime this year and 1-2 in shootouts. ... Chicago has a power-play goal in 16 of 20 games. ... Columbus is 4-1-2 in its last seven in Nationwide Arena vs. Chicago. ... Nine of the last 10 games between these teams at Nationwide Arena have been decided by a single goal, including five after regulation.
Roster Report
The Blue Jackets made one change to the lineup. David Savard, who missed Saturday's game with an illness, stepped back into the defensive lineup in place of Michael Del Zotto, who missed the game with a lower-body injury. Other scratches were defensemen Zach Werenski (lower body) and Dean Kukan.
Up Next
Columbus meets the Blackhawks in the second game of the series Thursday night at 7 p.m. at Nationwide Arena.