Blue Jackets eager to show their resiliency as Game 5 looms

For a couple of weeks, John Tortorella has maintained his Blue Jackets team has learned to navigate the ups and downs of playoff hockey.

From its five-game loss to Pittsburgh in the 2017 playoffs to last year's franchise-first postseason series win over Tampa Bay and everything in between, it's a team that has grown in its comfort in postseason play and everything that comes with it.

"I think to develop mental toughness, you need to go through experience," Tortorella said before Friday night's Game 4 against Toronto. "Do you fall in the fetal position or do you handle it head on? Do you succeed? Do you fail? All those things. I think you learn from the experience of it.

"It's not from coaching. It's from players experiencing certain situations, and that part of the game to me far outweighs the X's and O's of the game right now. That's something we do try to coach it quite a bit, a lot more than X's and O's, but then it falls on the players, how they handle it."

But with the team in the midst of its fourth straight postseason berth, they've never had to deal with a situation quite like this.

No Columbus fan needs the situation laid back out to them, but here we are. After seeing a 3-0 lead disappear in the final four minutes of Friday's 4-3 loss to Toronto in Game 4, Columbus faces a do-or-die, winner-take-all Game 5 against the Maple Leafs on Sunday night at 8 p.m.

It was just the third time a team in NHL history a team came back from a three-goal deficit in the final four minutes of regulation to win a postseason game. In other words, it's a situation that has precious little precedence, but here the Blue Jackets are, having to move past one of the toughest losses in franchise history.

The good news? The last team in a similar situation did just fine. Anaheim scored three times in the final four minutes of Game 5 of its 2017 second round series vs. Edmonton, then got the winner in the second overtime to take a 3-2 lead in the series. Edmonton's response? Facing elimination, Oilers came back to win Game 6 by a 7-1 score.

So while it's easy to feel like it will be impossible for Columbus to rally back after Friday night's loss, the limited history at hand shows the opposite. And the Blue Jackets feel they have a team that will be ready for the challenge.

"You can't dwell on things," captain Nick Foligno said Saturday morning. "It's how you respond to adversity that is going to allow you to have success, especially in the playoffs. If there's anything we've learned, that's what makes good teams great in the playoffs. They respond the right way, and I have full confidence our team will respond the right way. It's a great opportunity for us."

One thing Tortorella has talked about as he's guided the Blue Jackets through their playoff education is how the team has learned how to handle the unique challenge the postseason provides. That's especially true when it comes to momentum changes, which tend to come fast and furious if a team lets them.

And unfortunately for Columbus, they let it happen Friday night, as after 56 rock-solid minutes of play by the Blue Jackets, the Maple Leafs scored one goal and quickly rode the momentum to turn it into three.

"This is what happens in a series," Seth Jones said. "The ups and downs, it's a roller coaster, and we have to try to stay as even keel as we can and deal with these ebbs and flows. We're not going to dwell on it. We're going to put it behind us and we're going to get ready for Game 5."

The trick now is to not let one bad stretch become the defining moment of not just the playoffs but the season. Columbus has displayed its ability to play and win through all manner of circumstances this year, from losing a number of prominent players to free agency in the summer to the myriad injuries that cost the team an NHL-high 419 man games to injury this season.

This will be a test unlike any of the others the team has faced, though. Foligno, for one, thinks the Blue Jackets are ready.

"Our group is resilient," he said. "If you've watched us at all this year, you've seen the things we've gone through. This isn't going to faze us. It was an upbeat group at breakfast today. We know we have a great opportunity in front of us. We're not going to allow that to go to waste just because of something that went wrong in one game."