Winning Thoughts: Werenski leads the charge in a comeback victory

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

BLUE JACKETS 3, UTAH HOCKEY CLUB 2, OT

1. Zach Werenski continues to prove why he’s one of the NHL’s elite defensemen.

Let’s be honest – for much of this game, the Blue Jackets simply didn’t have their mojo. After a war of attrition Thursday in Vegas, Friday night’s game at Utah was the second half of a back-to-back thousands of miles from home – at altitude, no less – and it was clear throughout that Columbus just didn’t have its best stuff.

“We didn’t play great,” Werenski acknowledged. “We were slow.”

But when you have one of the game’s best players on your team, anything is possible, and it felt like Werenski took over the game in the third once the Blue Jackets fell into a 2-0 hole. Not that he'd want credit – Werenski would surely tip his hat to Kirill Marchenko and Kent Johnson for scoring the goals in regulation that tied things up, and to Daniil Tarasov for keeping the Blue Jackets in the game with 31 saves.

Make no mistake, though – Werenski’s fingerprints were all over the comeback for the never-say-die Blue Jackets. The Norris Trophy candidate looked like a man on a mission in the third period and ended up factoring in all three CBJ goals that earned the win.

On the first, Werenski took the puck behind his own net, skated the length of the ice and put a shot on net that goalie Karel Vejmelka could only fight off. Adam Fantilli put the rebound back to the netfront, and Marchenko was there to shovel a backhand into the net to make it a 2-1 game.

On the tying goal, Werenski again was a piece of the puzzle, disrupting an attempted breakout by Utah and allowing Dante Fabbro to collect the puck. As Werenski rushed up the ice, Fabbro pushed it ahead to James van Riemsdyk, who set up Kent Johnson for a shot from the left side that ended up in the net.

Then, of course, came Werenski’s OT winner, and the defenseman made the play happen by dispossessing Barrett Hayton to set up a 2-on-0 rush. Werenski and Cole Sillinger passed the puck back and forth before Werenski put the final pass into the net to call game.

“(Hayton) kind of fumbles it for a second, and I feel like right then, if you’re close enough, you can strike,” Werenski said. “Once you can beat your guy in overtime, it seems like you have a lot of ice, so try to get skating. Pretty fun play there.

“I thought when I gave it back to (Sillinger), maybe he was gonna shoot it, and then I was almost below the goal line. He makes a good pass back to me. It would have looked pretty dumb if we missed it or something, but no, it’s a great play all around.”

Werenski’s seventh career OT winner was one for the record books as well. It was his 17th point of January, a CBJ record for a defenseman, breaking the previous mark of 16 he set in November then equaled in December. It also moved him to 57 points on the year, tying the CBJ single-season record set by Seth Jones and tied by Werenski a season ago for scoring by a defenseman.

With a full 30 games left, it seems likely he breaks that record, doesn’t it?

2. The return of van Riemsdyk to the game was also a spark for the Blue Jackets.

You never want to see it, but taking a stick or puck to the face is an occupational hazard for a hockey player, a reality that was reinforced to JVR in the first period.

Former CBJ defenseman Ian Cole caught van Riemsdyk with a high stick eight minutes into the game, opening up a gash on his face that immediately started pouring blood. The veteran forward missed not just the rest of the first but also all of the second as he was stitched up, and he returned to the game in the third with a facemask attached to his helmet.

Without van Riemsdyk on the ice, the CBJ forward lines were askew, another factor in a game where the Blue Jackets struggled to gain traction throughout. But it didn’t seem to be a mistake that they were a better team with the veteran on the ice in the final period, and van Riemsdyk had the primary assist on the game-tying goal. He not only passed Johnson the puck, he drove Nick DeSimone to the net and watched as the rebound of Johnson’s shot went off the Utah defenseman’s skate and in.

“Obviously it’s pretty tough for him to come back,” Johnson said. “It’s an unfortunate play, but yeah, it’s funny to see him come back. He couldn’t really talk and he had the bubble on, big lips. But that’s hockey, so you love it.”

With the assist, van Riemsdyk finished January with 13 points in 14 games, and he’s become a key piece of the CBJ offensive attack with Sean Monahan on the shelf. With more than 1,000 games to his credit, van Riemsdyk is a calming, veteran presence on the CBJ bench, too.

And, as he showed on this night, a tough customer.

“He’s a hockey player, right?” head coach Dean Evason said. “That’s what hockey players do.”

3. The Blue Jackets put talks that they can’t win a back-to-back to rest.

Columbus entered the game with an 0-7 record in the second half of back-to-back games, a bugaboo that was putting a serious drain on the team’s playoff push.

As the Blue Jackets arrived at the Delta Center and were preparing for the game, that fact was a big focus of media availability, so if they didn’t know the stat, they certainly became aware.

“Once you told us, we had to bring it into the group and talk about it,” Evason quipped postgame.

“I didn’t even know it was a problem until today when we talked about it,” Johnson said.

Now, that monkey is off their back, even if it didn’t come easy. Again, this was a tough travel ask – the Blue Jackets have had their fair share of those this season – with Columbus tripping to the Pacific time zone Wednesday, playing a tight, physical game against Vegas on Thursday and then flying back to Mountain time to take on Utah on Friday.

Columbus didn’t arrive at its Salt Lake City hotel until 2 a.m., and the impact of the travel seemed to show throughout as the Blue Jackets were a step behind for much of the game. In the end, they were able to battle back and played their strongest period in the third for their first back-to-back win of the season.

Just how long had it been since the Blue Jackets won games on consecutive day on the road? All the way back to Jan. 6-7, 2020, when Columbus beat Los Angeles and Anaheim on back-to-back nights.

“Back-to-backs are really tough, especially when the team is rested,” Werenski said. “Everyone goes through them, and it’s one of those things where if we want to get where we want to go and take steps forward, those are the types of games you have to win at some point. You don’t have to win them all, but you can’t be 0-7, right? So I think this is a huge step forward for our group.”