Postgame Hat Trick: Atkinson, Panarin make history in Nashville

As I waited for the elevator to head down to the locker room after the
Blue Jackets' 5-2 victory on Saturday night
over Nashville, a member of the traveling party I won't name had a succinct wrap-up of the game.
"Well, that was a butt-kicking," he said.
And it was.
Columbus was very good at 5-on-5 in the first period and built a 3-1 lead, was positively dominant at even strength while increasing the advantage to 5-2 in the second, and never let the Predators get anything going in the third while closing out their fourth consecutive victory.

It certainly feels like all the pieces have come together for the Jackets, with an offense that now features seven 20-goal scorers pumping in goals, a defensive crew jelling into a stingy unit, and Sergei Bobrovsky stacking excellent performances on top of each other.
Of course, things can turn in an instant -- as they did in the past week as Columbus went from fighting it to playing its best hockey of the year -- but for right now, it's a good time to be a Jackets fan.
Here are three observations from the win over Nashville.
1. Rewriting the records: Move over Rick Nash and, uh, Artemi Panarin, but Cam Atkinson and Artemi Panarin have put some new ink in the CBJ record book.
With two goals against the Predators, Atkinson now has 41 on the season, tying him with Nash for the most in franchise history. Nash put 41 pucks in the net in his Rocket Richard Trophy-winning season of 2003-04, while Atkinson has now matched him, and the two are the only Blue Jackets ever to get to 40 goals on the season.

Atkinson will have four cracks at becoming the first Blue Jacket to get to 42, and it's hard to bet against him the way his reconstructed top line featuring Panarin and Matt Duchene is playing.
"It's a cool accomplishment for sure," Atkinson said. "There's still some big games left. I'm not done."
Meanwhile, Panarin had four assists, the most helpers in a game this season for a Blue Jacket, including primary assists on the three first-period goals scored by the team. With seven points in the last four straight games, Panarin now has 83 on the season, breaking the franchise record he set last season.
How's this for symmetry? Last year, Panarin had 27 goals and 55 assists for his 82 points. This year, he was at that same exact line until his fourth and final assist pushed him over the top.
"He led the charge," Atkinson said. "We're going to need him to do that. That's what he brings, and it's fun to watch and especially fun to play with when he's making those sorts of plays."
When Duchene first arrived, head coach John Tortorella put him between the two talented wingers, but the chemistry wasn't quite right. It has been since Tortorella re-inserted Duchene between Atkinson and Panarin during the game vs. Montreal on Thursday night, as the trio combined for eight points in Nashville and created one of the season's best goals vs. the Habs.
"They've found some consistency right now," Tortorella said.
2. Response goals: There were two critical stretches in the game, and Columbus came out on the right end of each in building its insurmountable lead.
First, with the Jackets up 2-1, Nashville buzzed late in the first period. The Predators forced Bobrovsky into a pair of excellent saves on a power play and hit the post, and the CBJ goalie had to make a huge save just after the power play as well as Colton Sissons got loose in the slot for a hard drive that Bobrovsky stopped with his shoulder.
It looked like Columbus was going to have to be happy just surviving the period with the one-goal lead, but the Jackets did more than that. After Bobrovsky's sensational stop on Sissons (say that five times fast), Panarin gathered the puck, made a deke at center ice, got into the offensive zone, and found Oliver Bjorkstrand in full flight for a wrist shot past goalie Juuse Saros with just 2.5 seconds left in the period.
"That was a big goal, going in on the road up two goals after one," Duchene said. "When we got the puck, I looked up and saw 12 seconds, so I knew we had time for a rush. I was kind of yelling at Bread, like, 'Let's try to get something going here,' and he did the rest. That was a great play."
Then, just after Nashville scored to make it a 3-2 game in the second period, Columbus responded again with a goal 74 seconds later to kill any momentum the Preds thought they had created. First, the Panarin-Duchene-Atkinson line spent 50 seconds in the offensive zone right after the goal, then Boone Jenner tallied on a breakaway to make it 4-2.

It started when Dean Kukan threw a high lob from his own zone toward center ice. When it landed, Jenner poked the puck ahead, shook Nashville defenseman Dante Fabbro -- playing in his first NHL game -- and then finished past Saros. When Atkinson scored again moments later, it was suddenly a 5-2 game.
"Jens' goal is a huge goal," Tortorella said. "To answer right away there, it gets momentum back on our side. That's a good team that's playing. They can really ramp it up when they get going. The fourth goal was the most important goal."
3. Beating the crowd:First of all, if you've never been to Nashville, you should go. There's not just great food and drink, but there's a palpable energy in the city, and the center of it is Broadway, with a stretch of honky-tonk bars running down the street from Bridgestone Arena to the Cumberland River. It's a "stop in, listen to some live music, and have a drink while you're at it" vibe that doesn't exist in many places in America.
That energy filters into Bridgestone Arena, where the fans treat the game more like a raucous college football game than a hockey game. There's a reason it's become one of the toughest buildings in the NHL in which to get a win.
"Their crowd is a factor when you play here for sure," said Seth Jones, who began his career with the Predators. "The way they come out and jump you, it feels like they try not to even give you a chance in the first five minutes of the game. I thought we handled that very well. We took the crowd out of it early."
The crowd was out of it late, too. By the final minutes, many of the home fans had left the building, and a loud "C-B-J" chant twice could be heard echoing around the rink. Considering this was just the Blue Jackets' ninth win in 44 trips to Nashville, it's fair to say a lot of frustration was being let go as Columbus salted away its win.
"It's great," Duchene said of the fan support. "It was fun to see all the fans who made the trip down here. It's not a hard sell to make a trip to Nashville for them, but it was great to see the support we had. They were loud."