What We Learned: VAN 5, CBJ 2

Instead of rebounding from a disappointing loss in Buffalo, the Blue Jackets began their five-day rest period with a thud.
That's the bad news.
One poor period led to four straight goals for the Vancouver Canucks, which led to a 5-2 victory for the visitors from British Columbia on Friday night at Nationwide Arena. It certainly wasn't the way Columbus wanted to go into its break, but the silver lining is that break itself.
The Blue Jackets are still banged up, physically, and getting swept in a back-to-back set the past two days didn't do much for them mentally. Getting away from it all for a few days might not be such a bad idea.
"It's good thing for us, I think," said goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who allowed four goals on 28 shots in his sixth straight start. "It's good to have a month like January, to reset, refocus and prepare ourselves for the tough end."

Columbus only has 10 games on the schedule in January, and six have already been played. Following their bye period this week, the final four games of the month will be stretched over 13 days - including another weekend of rest for the 2018 Honda NHL All-Star Game in Tampa Bay on Jan. 27-28.
That's quite a fortunate scheduling break for a team that still has three players on injured reserve and a fourth, rookie forward Sonny Milano, who missed the past two games with an upper-body injury.
"We'd love to play again right away," veteran defenseman Jack Johnson said. "When you have games like this, you look forward to getting back on the ice and playing right away, but this month we've had some key injuries and this has been a good month to heal up]. If you're going to pick a month during the season [to have multiple injuries], this was it, and these few days will give our guys a little extra time too. Hopefully, we'll get some of those guys back soon."
There's a mental portion of it, as well.
The Blue Jackets are in a stretch where goals are not just hard to come by, but they feel like unearthed gems whenever they occur. It seems like the puck is the size of a beach ball right now, and the net isn't much bigger than a basketball hoop.
Columbus has scored just 11 goals in the past seven games, an average of 1.57 per game, and has allowed an average of 2.71. Looking at those numbers, it's impressive they went 3-4-0 during that stretch.
They also entered this game second place in the Metropolitan Division with 53 points. That status will almost certainly change while the Jackets take five days off, but the payoff could be well worth the rest.
"I think the break's good for everybody, young and old, and the coaching staff … everybody," said defenseman Seth Jones, who opened the scoring at 4:33 of the first period with his eighth goal. "Get away from the rink for a few days and just regroup; take your mind off the game and come back, have a nice practice on Wednesday and be ready to go on Thursday [against Dallas]."
Also, there are still 36 games left to play. That's plenty of time to fix the scoring issues and get things going back in the right directions. After January, the final two-plus months of the season will require healthy bodies and minds.
Might as well give those a recharge now.
"We can't hang our heads," said Jones, who extended his point streak to four games on his goal. "No one's going to dig us out. We've got to do it ourselves. We're still sitting second in the Metro, so we're not in too bad of a spot right now. I know it seems like we're not even in the playoffs, with the way we've been playing, because our expectations were so high - and that's a good thing. We'll be fine."
Here's what we learned:
I: TALE OF TWO PERIODS
This game was decided in the first 40 minutes, which were divided into two starkly opposite periods.
The Blue Jackets went into the first intermission with a 1-0 lead, and felt good about the way they played in the first 20 minutes. They outshot the Canucks 11-8, scored a power-play goal and dictated play to the Canucks most of the way.
Zach Werenski was called for tripping with just 23 seconds left before the horn, though, and that turned out to be the start of some bad things.
The Canucks had 1:38 of carryover power-play time to start the second period, and capitalized on a Sven Baertschi's goal at 1:19 which tied it 1-1. There were three more Canucks goals that followed, including another power-play goal scored by Brendan Gaunce to make it 3-1.
"I thought we were good coming into the game, and I thought we had a good first period," Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said. "Like I told them after the first period, 'We have to kill this penalty off.' And the way it happened, it hit a couple of skates, and then we just can't get the momentum back for ourselves. I thought it was really important for us tonight to try and get that second goal."
By the time Vancouver defenseman Alex Edler made it 4-1 at 17:15 of the second, the energy had already been drained from the building. The Canucks took a three-goal lead into the second intermission, feeling good about their odds of ending a five-game losing streak.
"We've got to kill that penalty off in the first minute of that period," Jones said. "Our energy level went way down after that. They scored two power-play goals, [one with] three seconds left, and that's on us to finish the job. It kind of turned from there."
II: HOCKEY HAS CHANGE-UPS TOO
Baseball isn't the only sport where a good change-of-pace offering can be beneficial.
Gaunce's goal proved that, when he scored a power-play goal in the second with what appeared to be a whiffed shot attempt. He actually didn't whiff, though.
Gaunce's stick snapped in half as he took a wrist shot inside the left face-off circle, and it sent the puck sliding slowly along the ice toward Bobrovsky, who was anticipating a harder shot. He watched the puck slide beneath his goal stick and through his pads.
Just like that, the Canucks had a two-goal cushion, 3-1.
"They took advantage of some bounces there," Johnson said. "One went in off a shin pad, or maybe [somebody's] foot. Broken stick. That's hockey. They got some chances, and they put it in, and we didn't finish enough of our chances. We've got to find a way to score some more goals."
III: ON THE BRIGHT SIDE …
[Video: VAN@CBJ: Jones opens scoring with PPG
The Blue Jackets did score the first goal of the game, and it was a beauty all the way around.
Artemi Panarin picked the puck off the half wall during the Jackets' first power play, gave it to Nick Foligno in the left circle and he passed it back to Jones inside the right circle. Jones stepped into the shot for his eighth goal and 30th point this season, which is second-highest on the team behind Panarin's 38 points.
It was another power-play goal, too, which was good to see. This was the third game in the past four Columbus has scored with the man-advantage, going a blistering 4-for-10 in that span (40 percent).
IV: HEAVY METAL
This back-to-back set could've turned out much differently had pucks shot by the Blue Jackets gone just a few inches to the left, right or down.
After Panarin hit goal posts twice and the crossbar once in a 3-1 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday, the Blue Jackets clanged pucks off the metal three more times against the Canucks, all goal posts.
Matt Calvert had one in the second period, sweeping a loose puck at the net and sending it off the left post. Lukas Sedlak had another one in the third, when he drilled a slap shot off the right post.
"If you start thinking about, 'Shoulda, coulda, woulda,' and these moral victories, I don't think you get yourself out of the hole," Tortorella said. "I think you've got to eat it, you've got to own it and try to find a way to get yourself right. That's as an individual player, that's as an individual coach, and then you're bringing into it the team concept. There's a ton of hockey to be played here, and we can't lose [ourselves]. We just have to try to find some ground and try to get better."
V: SHOOT FIRST, DON'T ASK QUESTIONS
They didn't exceed 40 shots, like Thursday in Buffalo with 45, but the Blue Jackets still had a shoot-first mentality against the Canucks.
Since losing 5-0 to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Dec. 31 in Columbus, they've made a concerted effort to shoot the puck more and look for high-skill plays less. They finished with more shots in four of the next five games, going 3-2-0 in those contests, and finished even against the Canucks (29-29).
"It's been a huge point of emphasis for us, in our struggles," Tortorella said. "No matter if we're healthy or not, in our struggles to score consistently, you can't score a goal if you don't shoot a puck."

VI: STILL SEARCHING
The search for productive forward lines outside of the top unit lasted another game without any concrete answers.
Tortorella flip-flopped Foligno and Oliver Bjorkstrand at the right-wing slots on the second and third lines for this game, hoping to come up with something on each unit.
He put Bjorkstrand with center Alex Wennberg, hoping they could generate shots and scoring chances for each other. Putting Foligno with Calvert and Sedlak was about trying to form a grind line that can also score goals.
Bjorkstrand finished with two shot attempts and no shots on goal. Wennberg, playing his second game after returning from a back injury, didn't have a shot attempt. Boone Jenner, however, led Columbus with six shots on goal as the left wing on that line.
Foligno, meanwhile, had one shot and assisted on both Blue Jackets goals - and Calvert scored his first goal since Dec. 2 against the Washington Capitals, breaking a goalless drought of 18 games.
"I actually liked that [second] line," Tortorella said. "I liked Sedlak, [Calvert] and [Foligno]. They had some chances too. I'm not going to get down. There's no magic potion. There's no sense of [cranking] and moaning. We're not going to see each other for a few days. If that's good or bad, I don't know. When we come back to work, we've got to come back to work. We've got to find a way to solidify ourselves and get some consistency with our game."