Morning Musings: Blue Jackets start hot but fall to Penguins

The Blue Jackets flipped the script from their previous two games Saturday night in Nationwide Arena. After two straight comeback wins, this time Columbus was the team to build an early 2-0 lead only to see it disappear, as Pittsburgh rallied for five straight goals to take a 6-3 victory and end the Jackets' modest two-game win streak.

Game In Five Minutes

Three Trending Topics

1. We'll start with, well, the start. The Blue Jackets fell into two-goal holes against both Vancouver and Nashville earlier this week, and if there was a focus on starting well, it was pretty clear on this night. Columbus was flying out of the gates, at one point outshooting the Pens 12-0 and building the 2-0 first-period lead on the strengths of goals by Boone Jenner and Jack Roslovic off Pittsburgh turnovers.
   "Great start," head coach Brad Larsen said. "We talked about starts -- we solved that."
   In the opening frame, the Blue Jackets had a 17-7 shots on goal edge and a 0.80-0.31 advantage in expected goals at 5-on-5
   per Natural Stat Trick
   . It was, in a word, dominant, and the margin could have been bigger had it not been for Pittsburgh goalie Tristan Jarry.
   "We stuck to our game plan," said Jack Roslovic, who played probably his best game of the young season with a goal and assist. "We definitely outbattled, outchanced them. We were all over them. Our plan was to get a good start. Now we have to take the good start and put it with the good finish."
   2. Because, as Roslovic alluded to there, the final 40 minutes went the opposite way. At 5-on-5 the final two periods, the Penguins had a 44-28 edge in shot attempts and a 30-14 advantage in shots on goal.
   Pittsburgh isn't quite the same team that won two Stanley Cups in 2016 and '17, but the bones are still there, and it's a veteran team that knows how to respond from such a disappointing first period.
   "I just thought we didn't play with the same pace as the first," Jenner said. "We didn't have the puck in the other zone and have the forecheck going as much as it was in the first."
   The end result was a 6-1 edge in goals over the final two periods for the visitors, as after Kent Johnson responded to Josh Archibald's goal early in the second, Pittsburgh rattled off two more to tie the game in the second and three in the third. A veteran team, the Penguins took advantage of the little mistakes the young Blue Jackets made, and once they smelled blood in the water, they pounced.
   "We took the first, they took the second, gather yourself for the third," Larsen said. "It's awful to give up two faceoff goals in the third period. It's just killer. That should never happen. And you know what, we let some things distract us tonight in some areas later in the game, I thought."
   3. Another positive for the Blue Jackets was the play of Johnson, who scored his first career NHL goal in his 14th game early in the second. Just 14 seconds after Archibald got the Penguins on the board, Roslovic fed Johnson alone along the goal line, and the young CBJ forward evaded a poke check from Jarry before slipping the puck between the legs of the Pittsburgh netminder.
   "It's huge," said Johnson, who celebrated in a way that seemed to show both relief and excitement. "It was really exciting in the moment. Big goal. Obviously it's too bad it wasn't a win, but I'll take it."

The rookie out of the University of Michigan has been getting better and better, as the first-round pick in the 2021 draft finished the night with a career-high 17:21 of ice time with three shots on goal, two takeaways, a hit and a blocked shot. The Jackets had an expected goals percentage of 58.82 percent when he was on the ice at 5-on-5.
"Looked like a little relief, right?" Larsen said of the goal celebration. "It was a great goal, great poise. He's another guy, I thought he had a pretty good game in a lot of areas."

Quote Of The Game

Larsen on the frustration of Sidney Crosby's game-winning goal coming on a faceoff following an icing call in the third period: "Yeah, but there's something leading up to it. That wouldn't even matter if we did A and B right. It got to C because we didn't do A and B right. That's the problem. That's what annoys me."

Nerd Stuff

• Johnny Gaudreau played in his 300th straight game, the third longest consecutive game streak in the NHL.
• With an assist on Jenner's opening goal, Gaudreau now has points in all four home games he's played in Nationwide Arena (4-2-6) and has a five-game point streak overall (4-3-7).
• Justin Danforth played just 4:46 before leaving in the first period with an upper-body injury, snapping his two-game goal streak.
• Columbus fell short of sweeping a three-game homestand, which would have been the 10th such occurrence in franchise history.
• Columbus had a 31-12 edge in hits in the game as 15 of 18 skaters in the game recorded at least one.
• Crosby (1-2-3) is the first player to notch a three-point game against Columbus this year.
• Pittsburgh has now scored six goals in four of its six games.

Being Social

Congrats to Kent Johnson!

Johnny Hockey's dad, Guy, was a bit as a guest analyst on Bally Sports Ohio in the second period.