Winning Thoughts: Wood's return sparks Blue Jackets over Sabres

After CBJ wins, we'll give three takeaways about what stood out or what we'll remember from the Blue Jackets' victory.

BLUE JACKETS 4, SABRES 3 (OVERTIME)

1. Miles Wood’s triumphant two-goal return keyed the Blue Jackets to a big road victory.

Before Tuesday night’s game in Buffalo, the CBJ forward had played in 516 NHL games.

He had scored an overtime goal in exactly zero of them.

So it made perfect sense that Wood was on the ice during Tuesday night’s 3-on-3, and even more that he scored the winner 2:53 into the extra frame to cap the Jackets’ 4-3 victory.

Call it a hunch, call it luck, or call it a player stepping up to the occasion, but head coach Dean Evason made the right decision by putting the 11-year veteran on the ice in overtime.

“Because we knew he was going to score,” Evason said when asked why Wood got the opportunity. “Coaches always know, right? Whenever it works out, it looks good for us.”

All joking aside, though, it was an earned opportunity for Wood, one of the fastest players in the NHL whose speed should play well with all the open ice in overtime. Plus, Wood had already played a big part in a pair of goals for the Blue Jackets on the night. He tipped Yegor Chinakhov’s shot past goalie Alex Lyon to tie the game with 6:05 to go, and his forecheck had helped set up Chinakhov’s first-period tally as well.

“He was having a good night, and that’s what we do,” Evason said. “When we huddle as a coaching staff, we talk about stuff like that. We have on our cards who we project should go, and then somebody says, ‘Well, maybe Woody.’ Maybe someone else is going well. They’re having a good night. They’re feeling good. So I think that’s part of coaching. Sometimes, you guess right, and sometimes you don’t. Fortunately, we guessed right tonight.”

Of course, Wood saved his best for last on the OT winner. He did a tremendous job to settle a bouncing puck to start the attack, then got it to Isac Lundeström, who fed Zach Werenski cutting down the left side. Wood made it to the net before Buffalo defenseman Owen Power and was there to deflect Werenski’s shot pass behind Lyon to end the game.

“It bounced like a crazy ball out there,” he said of the puck. “I don’t know why – bad ice or something. But I was just fortunate enough to get the puck there at the end and pass it up to Lundy, who made a great play to Z. I was fortunate enough to score the goal there.”

The performance came in Wood’s first game since Oct. 13, the CBJ home opener in which New Jersey defenseman Dougie Hamilton accidentally caught Wood with a high stick that left him fearing he’d lost his eye. In truth, Wood just suffered blurred vision and needed eight stitches, but 15 days later, he was back in the lineup and making an impact.

Perhaps we should have seen the performance coming, though. Born in Buffalo when his father Randy played for the Sabres, Wood now has 12 goals in 22 career games against Buffalo.

“I did not know that,” he said postgame. “I’ll take it. It’s a fun stat.”

2. The Blue Jackets are proving to be a resilient bunch this year.

The win over the Sabres was the fourth in the last five contests for Columbus, and three of those go down as comeback victories.

This was the first third-period rally of the bunch, as former CBJ forward Joshua Dunne gave Buffalo a 3-2 lead 2:40 into the third before Wood’s tying goal.

Evason has spoken multiple times already on the young season that the Blue Jackets have shown they can take a punch and respond in a topsy-turvy game, and this was another example against a Buffalo team that was 4-1-1 in its last six contests coming in.

“It’s a big win for us,” Wood said. “The Sabres have been playing well of late. We got down there late in the third period and the team stuck together and got two goals and two points, so that’s all that matters.”

Of course, you could also argue the Blue Jackets have sometimes needed to dip into that reservoir of resilience because they've made games more difficult on themselves than they had to be. In Saturday’s shootout win at Pittsburgh, that came in the form of a pair of late penalties that let the Pens get back into the game.

Tonight, it manifested in how the Blue Jackets dominated the first 15 minutes – they were up 13-1 in shots on goal at one point – then let the Sabres off the mat. But in the end, games are 60 minutes – if not longer – and Columbus did what it had to do to earn two points.

“I’m sure (the Sabres) got a little bit of heat in between (periods), and they came out hard,” Evason said. “Sure, did we give up a couple? Obviously, but we stayed in it and didn’t allow it to get away from us. That’s something we’ve talked about, and hopefully we can continue to do that.”

3. The CBJ fourth line again made a difference.

Evason might disagree with that description – who numbers these lines, anyway? – but whatever you want to call it, the trio of Wood, Chinakhov and Lundeström was critical to the victory.

Not only did Wood notch his first two-goal game as a Blue Jacket, Chinakhov scored for the second straight game and added an assist, and Lundeström assisted on the game winner.

It’s a line that has plenty of speed, as Wood and Chinakhov can motor with the best of them and Lundeström isn’t too shabby either. Wood’s introduction to the lineup took the speed element to the next level, and the trio also showed some grittiness, scoring goals by forechecking and getting to the net.

“I like that,” Chinakhov said of adding Wood’s speed to the equation. “I like that he’s so fast. I just need to chip the puck to him. That’s it.”

The performance came after Evason and the coaching staff made the difficult decision to take Zach Aston-Reese out of the lineup. The veteran forward hadn’t been playing badly, but someone had to come out for Wood to go back in, and Chinakhov’s recent play left Aston-Reese as the man on the outside.

On this night, it all worked.

“Woody was so physical all night, right?” Evason said. “He brings an element – not that Reeser doesn’t; he plays hard as well – but Woody, he’s a big body that just is continually banging and disrupting and getting in on the forecheck. So that line had a night.”