“He played like a man possessed and gets the first one,” Coyle said. “When your captain is going like that and your leaders are playing that way, it’s not hard to follow up and have everyone doing their part and playing for the team.”
2. The Blue Jackets took the wind out of the sails of the Montreal crowd by dominating the opening minutes.
Columbus knew what was on the line in this one, as a loss in game No. 80 would have put the team’s playoff hopes on life support. The Blue Jackets got some help early in the day as the Islanders lost to the Senators, and the playoff path is now fairly simple after Saturday night’s win and Philadelphia’s triumph over Winnipeg – win the last two and have the Flyers drop two points, and they’re in.
First, though, they had to take care of business against the Canadiens, and that was no easy task. A capacity crowd of 20,962 filled Centre Bell, and the building was positively buzzing before opening faceoff to support a team that entered the game in the running for the Atlantic Division title.
But the Blue Jackets were ready, putting 10 shots on goal in the first 5:42 and taking a 2-0 lead. Jenner started things off just 1:13 into the game, as Montreal goalie Jakub Dobeš spilled the rebound of a Zach Werenski shot and Jenner was there to collect and backhand it home. Columbus continued to push, and Coyle made it 2-0 as he put Jake Christiansen’s cross-crease feed past Dobeš just shy of the six-minute mark.
“Listen, you gotta love playing in Montreal,” Bowness said. “It’s Saturday night, Hockey Night in Canada, but it’s such a great atmosphere here and they have an excellent hockey club over there. They’re fast, they’re skilled, so we needed to get off to the start we did. And again, look who came through – Charlie and Boone. Give the veterans all the credit in the world to get us off on the right foot.”
Montreal battled back in the latter half of the period to cut it to 2-1, but the Blue Jackets were able to build on their game from there. Columbus had a 27-5 edge in shot attempts at 5-on-5 in the second and extended the lead to 4-1 on goals from Marchenko – a beauty of a snipe on the rush – and Monahan, then survived a bit of a chaotic third thanks in part to Coyle’s power-play goal.
But it all started, well, with the start, and the Blue Jackets kept it going for the full 60 minutes.
“It was big,” Coyle said. “Our start was pretty solid. … It helps to get rewarded for your play right away. I think that can enable you to stay on that right track that we were on, coming out hard, being on top of them, forcing turnovers with our forecheck and then taking the puck to the net when we can. Having our D jump in, winning wall battles, that all led to our first couple of goals.”
3. The Blue Jackets stuck with the plan offensively and were rewarded with the five-goal output.
Thursday’s 5-0 loss at Buffalo was frustrating for a lot of reasons, but the biggest may have been that Columbus felt the final score wasn’t indicative of the way the team had played. Buffalo goalie Colten Ellis made 37 saves, and the Blue Jackets believed they generated offense throughout the game but just couldn’t get some good looks by the netminder.
Bowness said the Blue Jackets had to just play the same way in Montreal, and to that end, he largely kept the lines together that the team utilized as Thursday’s game went on. The reward came in Montreal, as Columbus scored five times, with all five goals coming from forwards.
“We didn’t score in Buffalo, but we created a lot of good chances,” Bowness said when asked about the line combinations. “We had a couple of games where we weren’t generating anything, we weren’t generating any shots, so we changed things up. Even though we didn’t score in Buffalo, we created a lot of good chances.”
On paper, it didn’t look like a good matchup for the Blue Jackets going in, as Columbus had scored just 10 goals in its previous 16 games, while Montreal had allowed only 11 in its previous 21 contests. As it turned out, the Blue Jackets had two goals just six minutes in, and Montreal ended up allowing five tallies for the first time since March 6.
And if anything was indicative of the way the Blue Jackets got their goals, it would be this stat – Coyle’s two tallies traveled a combined 13 feet, according to the official NHL statistics. The veteran forward got to the net on both and capitalized on a pair of perfect feeds from Jake Christiansen on his first goal and Marchenko on his second.
“I think that’s where they mostly come from,” Coyle said of his goals. “We’ve talked more about that – when we’re doing the right things and we’re around the net and it’s not going in, you can’t stray away. Even more so, to just stay there and good things will happen. But I was just on the end of some pretty good passes. I didn’t have to do much.”
