Postgame Analysis: Blue Jackets play their game in Game 1 win

Saturday afternoon after his team's final practice ahead of Sunday night's Stanley Cup qualifying series opening game vs. Toronto, Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella said his team was ready to play.

He wasn't wrong.

Columbus put together 60 minutes of Blue Jackets hockey on Sunday, smothering the Maple Leafs on the way to a 2-0 victory that gave the Ohio squad a 1-0 lead in their best-of-five series.

The big question of the series was simple -- which team would force the other to play its game? Would Columbus' relentless forechecking make it difficult for Toronto's big offensive guns to get going, or would the Maple Leafs simply overwhelm the Blue Jackets with their high-scoring unit?

For one night, the battle of styles went to Columbus. One got the sense as the first two periods unfolded without a goal, the Blue Jackets felt right at home. While it's folly to say Columbus was perfectly happy with a 0-0 game -- they'd rather have been up 5-0, of course -- the game did play into the hands of the Blue Jackets and goaltender Joonas Korpisalo.

"We've played a lot of games that way," Tortorella said afterward. "A lot of one-goal games, tie games going into the third period. We just continue to try to play."

The head coach knows of what he speaks. Columbus was tied for the NHL lead with Minnesota during the regular season with 12 wins when going into the third period tied. In all, the team's 21 games in that situation was one behind Arizona for the most in the league. The Blue Jackets also won 20 one-goal games during the regular season, the most in the NHL.

So it was the kind of game that favored Columbus, especially when Korpisalo showed up and played the way he did. Both goalies put on a bit of an exhibition late in the second period, with Korpisalo's lunging, full-extension glove denial of Auston Matthews the obvious highlight of the game.

But the Finnish netminder also had to turn in a big save right off the bat, as Leafs rookie Nicholas Robertson was open in front of the net on his very first NHL shift only to see his shot denied by the quick pad of Korpisalo.

The goaltender was the winner of a training camp battle with Elvis Merzlikins for the top job, and Korpisalo didn't disappoint with an efficient 28-save shutout, a first in CBJ postseason history.

"I think it started with Korpi," said Cam Atkinson, who notched the CBJ winner. "He made some pretty big saves at crucial times. That's the way we have to play. We have to play a greasy, in-your-face defensive style. They obviously have a lot of star power. Breakdowns, they're going to capitalize and get their opportunities. If we play the right way, we're going to have success."

On this night, the Blue Jackets did just that. Matthews, who had 47 goals this season to place third in the NHL, had some good looks but couldn't score on six shots while the Leafs played him a team-best 24:38. Mitchell Marner had 67 points in 59 games this year but didn't have a shot on goal and finished minus-2. John Tavares also was minus-2 despite winning 15 of 19 faceoffs in almost 20 minutes of action.

But perhaps the most telling stat of the night was the way the Blue Jackets finished off the game. At a time when you'd expect Toronto to be pushing for the tying goal, the Maple Leafs didn't have a shot on goal over the last 6:12 or even a shot attempt in the official NHL stats for the last 6:00 of play.

"They play playoff hockey," Toronto forward Zach Hyman said afterward. "This is playoff hockey."

Cam's good start: On the day the Blue Jackets began summer training camp July 13, Atkinson made it clear -- he needed to have a better playoffs than a regular season.

He was dinged up throughout the year, one reason he finished with just 12 goals in 44 games a year after tying the CBJ franchise record with 41 tallies. Injuries or not, though, Atkinson told reporters he expected more out of himself come the postseason, and he backed those words up with his goal early in the third period that went down as the game winner.

There will be argument as to whether Andersen should have made the save or not, but credit also must go to Atkinson for making a quick decision and putting a hard, low shot on net from a deceptive angle. He took a long breakout pass from David Savard with speed, came in along the right side and fired by Andersen from the right dot.

"I closed my eyes," he joked of the shot before turning a bit more serious. "I kind of knew where I wanted to shoot. I wasn't really expecting it to go in, but obviously one of those I'll take. A goal like that gives me a lot of momentum and juice, and I started feeling a lot better about my game after that."

Tortorella has spoken over the past few weeks about how Atkinson needs to be a leader with his energy and his play, and the head coach was left pleased by not just Atkinson's goal but also a play in the final moments when Atkinson absorbed a hit to make a play that led to Alex Wennberg's empty-net goal.

"I thought Cam played a good game," Tortorella said. "For a goal scorer, a guy that has struggled a little bit as we've gone through, hopefully that will loosen him up a. bit. The play I like about his game was the last play, the empty-net goal, he just gets run over but he makes the play to get the puck out, and that's a really big play for us. As far as the goal scorers, they want to score goals. Hopefully that will help his confidence."

Out of the box: If you watched the other NHL games this weekend as part of the league restart, you probably noticed one thing - a lot of whistles.

A full 19 penalties were called in the first game back between Carolina and the New York Rangers. Six other games had at least 10 penalties in them. And the Blue Jackets apparently were paying attention.

Columbus was the least penalized team in the NHL all season, and the Blue Jackets backed that up by taking just one penalty in the opener against Toronto.

"There's been a lot of penalties called in the games here when it started out yesterday and through today," Tortorella said. "We tried to make it a point of emphasis as far as just trying to play the right way, skating, keeping our sticks down and just checking the right way."

That's of particular note because the Maple Leafs have been one of the best teams in the NHL on the power play this year, placing sixth in the league with a 23.1-percent success rate. That percentage jumped to over 26 percent under head coach Sheldon Keefe, who took over 23 games into the season.

"They have one of the best power plays in the league," said Atkinson, who took the lone infraction, a tripping call in the second period. "We knew before the game the refs were going to be calling penalties, so it was nice that we just got one."