Winning Thoughts: Blue Jackets stick with it to earn two points in Pittsburgh

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

BLUE JACKETS 5, PENGUINS 4 (SHOOTOUT)

1. In a crazy game, the Blue Jackets showed their resilience yet again.

Saturday night had just about everything – eight goals, two reviews, a fight, some dramatic saves and, finally, a shootout.

And considering just how back-and-forth it was, one of the key factors that allowed the Blue Jackets to leave Pittsburgh with a rare win was how the Blue Jackets kept their heads on their shoulders.

That might sound a little crazy considering Columbus led by a 4-2 score with 10 minutes to go, then proceeded to do exactly what you don't want to do in that situation. The Blue Jackets took back-to-back penalties, leading to a power-play goal by Kris Letang that cut the lead to one, before the Penguins got an extra-attacker tally to tie it with 3:06 to go.

Columbus had largely dominated the puck throughout – they had a 36-15 advantage in shots on goal at 5-on-5 – but the late penalties allowed the Penguins to get back in the game and got PPG Paints Arena rocking.

So, yes, that wasn’t ideal, and what did most CBJ fans think after Bryan Rust’s tying goal? Likely: Well, we’ve seen this movie before, and we don't like the ending.

But it wasn’t over, in large part because the Blue Jackets stuck with it. It wasn’t always perfect – see Ivan Provorov’s heroic save of a shot off the line in overtime – but the Jackets had their chances as well before Kent Johnson, Adam Fantilli and Kirill Marchenko went good morning, good afternoon and good night in the shootout. It marked just the fourth time in team history the Jackets went 3-for-3 in a shootout and the first since 2011.

“I think there’s some perseverance obviously by the group,” head coach Dean Evason said. “Our commitment was fantastic, and our composure was good when it could have went sideways again. They held their composure, and we were able to get the job done.”

2. There were several CBJ standouts in this one, but how about the play of Yegor Chinakhov and Dmitri Voronkov?

As the Blue Jackets were summoned for postgame questions in the PPG Paints Arena locker room, two players made sense to chat.

There was Dmitri Voronkov, whose sixth career two-goal game was a huge part of the victory. And then there was Yegor Chinakhov, who was a healthy scratch to start the season but has built his game over the past few contests and put the Blue Jackets ahead in the third period with his first tally of the season.

There’s also the little issue of Voronkov not speaking much English, so Chinakhov did double duty. First, he answered questions about his game, then he served as a translator for Voronkov.

As for Chinakhov, his play has taken a notable step up in the past few contests. After he notched a single shot on goal in his first two contests after stepping in for the injured Miles Wood, Chinakhov has nine in the last three games, and his wired wrist shot past goalie Arturs Silovs just 1:55 into the third period put the Jackets up 3-2. It was vintage Chinakhov, who has the quick release and heavy shot to beat goalies clean from almost anywhere in the offensive zone.

“I like scoring,” Chinakhov said. “It feels great. I love the hockey, so I just try to be better every day.”

Voronkov, meanwhile, now has points in seven of eight games of the year, posting a 5-4-9 line in the early going. It would be even more impressive if he hadn’t had a couple goals wiped off the board by opposing challenges, and Voronkov is a unique player in the NHL, with the size to get to the hard areas of the ice and the hands to finish.

He showed his talent with a one-timer off a feed from Johnson to tie the score at 2 late in the second, then made it a 4-2 game in the third when he got to the net and finished a pass from Sean Monahan.

Was Voronkov excited to see the two goals count tonight after being a bit snakebitten by the rulebook in the early going?

“He was nervous because the last couple of goals didn’t count,” Chinakhov said. “But he’s happy.”

3. The Blue Jackets showed improvement in some key areas tonight.

There was an unfortunate trio of statistics stacked up against the Blue Jackets going into this one. Their road record a season ago? 14-23-4, sixth-worst in the NHL. In the second half of back-to-backs a season ago, the Blue Jackets won just twice in 12 tries. And every CBJ fan knows Pittsburgh had been a house of horrors, as Columbus had just two wins in the Steel City in the past decade.

Coming off a tough home loss Friday to Washington, it all added up to be a test of the Blue Jackets’ mettle. But facing all of those bad omens, the Blue Jackets did what they had to do to get the win.

When asked if the Blue Jackets are a better team in those regards – at least when it comes to road games and back-to-back tests – this year than last, Evason answered in the affirmative.

“It’s a good question,” Evason said. “I’ll say yeah. We’ve talked about it enough, and you can talk until you’re blue in the face, but they get it. They understand it. They know it. We’ve talked a lot about our leadership and our preparation, not ours as a coaching staff but the preparation of the players to get ready to play a back-to-back was really good tonight.”

In the locker room, the Blue Jackets seemed to take the attitude that it didn’t matter, yet it did. Getting better in those areas as compared to a year ago is something the team wanted to do, but it also goes back to an ethos of showing up each night ready to compete.

“We just didn’t think about it,” captain Boone Jenner said. “Look, we want to be a team that’s hard to play against on the road or at home. We’re not going to change the way we play. Back-to-back or not, we have lots of energy. You saw it tonight. I don’t think playing last night affected us at all. We just wanted to come out with a good effort, and I think we did that.”