SvoNotes: Blue Jackets earn gut-check win over Rangers

Losing stinks.
It's something Brad Larsen has said multiple times this year, both to his team at practice and to the media. And it's something he and the Blue Jackets have had to live with quite a bit this year as a 12-6-0 start was followed by a frustrating 6-15-1 stretch.

The Blue Jackets knew there would be ups and plenty of downs with the youngest team in the NHL, but that doesn't make the latter any more fun to have to go through.
And one of the biggest downs of the season was Wednesday night, as the Blue Jackets were drubbed 6-0 by visiting Calgary in a game that oddly enough probably wasn't even that close. Once the final horn sounded, Larsen and his staff went back to work, trying to figure out how to get the team back on track after a lifeless effort.
Losing stinks. Losing the way the Jackets did to the Flames is worse.
Yet the sun always comes up the next day, and the Blue Jackets had a chance to respond Thursday night in the second half of the back-to-back against the New York Rangers. And Columbus did just that, earning a 5-3 win over the Metropolitan Division leaders.

"This was a tough game," Larsen said. "That team was rested. They were waiting for us, and we all know what happened the night before with our group. It was a long day. I'm not gonna lie, it was a long night and a long day for these guys, but they handled this really well.
"We weren't perfect, but they paid attention to what we were trying to talk about, trying to get better at. As a collective group, I thought they were so much more focused and determined to be a more competitive team tonight."
From the player side, that was the aim as well. The Blue Jackets knew what they put on the ice on Wednesday wasn't up to snuff, and they were able to answer the bell 24 hours later.
"We didn't like last night at all -- our effort, our execution, nothing about our game," captain Boone Jenner said. "We talked about it and tried to move past it. The best part about it is we didn't have to sit on it too long. We had a chance to tonight to go out and play more of our style of and more of our game. I thought we did that. The focus was there right from the start and carried on through the game for us."
Yet fans -- and players -- could have been excused for thinking "here we go again" when the Rangers scored on two of their first three shots on goal and led 2-0 just 4:44 into the game. It took just 89 seconds for former Blue Jackets forward Artemi Panarin to skate into the zone, take advantage of the small amount of space afforded him by defenseman Gavin Bayreuther, cut into the slot and wire a wrister past Joonas Korpisalo's blocker to make it 1-0.
Then a few moments later, the Rangers won a faceoff and used some quick puck movement to get the puck to Braden Schneider, and the rookie's centering feed went off the skate of Barclay Goodrow and top-shelf past Korpisalo to make it 2-0.
It wasn't one-way traffic at that point, but somehow, the Blue Jackets found themselves on the wrong end of a two-goal deficit.
"We started the game right," Larsen said. "We weren't on our heels. We weren't chasing it. And then a dangerous player -- we all know what Panarin can do, he makes a special play and bang it's in your net. A faceoff play, our coverage is good, it goes off a skate. It could have unraveled real quick there, real quick, and we stuck to it."
And less than three minutes later, it was a 2-2 game. First, Jenner gave a touch pass to Laine entering the zone with speed, and the big Finn deked his way toward the net and centered a perfect pass that went off the skates of Gustav Nyquist and into the net to cut the deficit in half just 1:05 after the Goodrow goal.
Then at the 7:28 mark, it was tied. Oliver Bjorkstand got to a dump-in first on the power play, Jenner dug it out of a scrum along the wall and fed it back to Zach Werenski, who shot a puck that Jenner deflected past Alexandar Georgiev.

From there, a team that had just seven goals in the last five games was ready to go.
"We've been struggling to score goals lately, but obviously getting two right away pretty much after they scored two, that was good for us," Laine said. "I feel like every line had chances, and we were able to score five goals, which usually should win you a game."

Anatomy of a Win

From there, the Blue Jackets kept the momentum going with a pair of second-period goals. First, Sean Kuraly gave Columbus the lead when he tipped Max Domi's pass past Georgiev 6:18 into the frame, then Jenner's second of the night from a sharp angle concluded a buzzing shift for the CBJ top line and made it 4-2 at 12:27 of the period.
The Rangers pushed in the third and got one back on the power play with 12:48 to go one Panarin's perfect pass across the royal road allowed Mika Zibanejad to rip a perfectly placed laser past Korpisalo from the left circle. But despite a 20-3 edge for the Rangers in shots on goal in the third, Kuraly got an empty-netter and Columbus held on.
How did they do it?
Big players playing big: Coming off such a stinging loss, the Jackets needed their leaders to do just that, and that's what happened on Thursday night. Jenner tied a career high with three points, alternate captain Zach Werenski matched his career-best mark with three assists, and another "A" in Nyquist scored. Add in a two-goal night from a veteran like Sean Kuraly and two assists from Laine and Columbus got what it needed from its top guys.
"Today was a real important game for our team, for a lot of guys, and you want the proper guys to step up," Larsen said.
New York style: What's funny about the Rangers is the team entered the game atop the Metro but last in the NHL in some important analytics categories at 5-on-5. That means the recipe for the Rangers to win has been to ride their talented big guns, win the special teams battle and get Vezina-quality goaltending from Igor Shesterkin.
On this night, Columbus largely mitigated those advantages. Panarin got his and Zibanejad scored, but NHL goals leader Chris Kreieder was kept off the board and Norris Trophy defenseman Adam Fox had to leave the game with an upper-body injury. Both teams were even on special teams with a single power-play goal, and Georgiev was given the start and did not turn in a Shesterkin-esque showing with just 14 saves on 18 shots against (.778 save percentage).
Korpi rules: On the other side of the goaltending coin was Korpisalo, who was downright fantastic. He might want the Panarin goal to open the scoring back, but he was excellent after that, including a number of fantastic saves as the Rangers built momentum in the third. None was better than his glove stop on Julien Gauthier on a Rangers power play with 10:00 to go as he somehow snagged a perfect redirection out of the air off a pass from Alexis Lafreniere.

Korpisalo finished with 33 saves (.917) and earned his fifth win of the season.
"It was a rough go at the beginning, btu he settled right in," Larsen said. "It doesn't always go perfect or how you want it to go. He settled in and was solid, and obviously in the third he was lights out. He made some incredible saves there down the stretch and he helped put us on his back."

Jenner Does His Part

After Wednesday's loss, Werenski spoke passionately at the postgame press conference about how frustrated he was that, as an alternate captain, his rough game helped contribute to a difficult night for the Blue Jackets.
It was one of those moments where you could feel just how much the struggle hit home for players. And with that context, you can also imagine how good it felt for Jenner to have the opposite experience against the Rangers, as the captain helped elevate the Blue Jackets to a much-needed victory with two goals and an assist.
You wouldn't necessarily know it, though, by his answer when asked postgame about how much it meant to do so much in a CBJ win.
"You definitely want to contribute that way," he acknowledged before turning the focus back to the team. "We had a sour taste in our mouth from last night. That wasn't us. Us as leaders wanted to go out and lead, and I thought the focus was there from everybody right from the puck drop."
While Jenner filled up the score sheet -- and originally had a second assist on Kuraly's empty-netter, a helper that was taken off the board upon review but would have given him a career-high four points -- he also added a team-best seven shot attempts and had six hits.
It was the kind of showing that makes Jenner who he is, and it couldn't have come at a better time.
"He played a really good game, and it was nice to see him getting rewarded," Laine said of his linemate. "He works hard every night, and that's how you're going to get success. He's a prime example of that."

Stats and Facts

• With two goals, Jenner now has 18 on the season, tied for the second-best mark in his career (2016-17). His career best is 30 in 2015-16, and it's starting to think that mark is in reach.
• Jenner also now has a 6-4-10 line in the last nine games.
• Kuraly, meanwhile, had his second multigoal game of the season and just the third of his career. With eight goals in his homecoming season, the Dublin native has tied a career high (2018-19).
• Nyquist's goal was his seventh in the last 14 games but the first that came in a win during that stretch.
• Werenski's three-assist game was his first of the season and the third of his career.
• The Blue Jackets now have trailed in 11 of their 19 wins this season, and this was the third win of the season in which the team has been down by multiple goals (Nov. 3 at Colorado, Nov. 15 vs. Detroit).
• Columbus has won three straight Thursday games and four of the last five on the day.
• The teams concluded the three-game season series with the Rangers having won two of three.
• With a 1-2-3 line, Panarin notched three goals and five assists for eight points in the three-game series this year. He has 4-6-10 in six games against the Blue Jackets since leaving the club in free agency at the end of the 2019 season.