Devils control final two periods, deal Jackets division loss
Standings don’t matter much in the first week of December, and the Blue Jackets seemed to play with that in mind even as first place was at stake in the Metropolitan Division on Tuesday night.
The upstart New Jersey Devils, meanwhile, played like they had a point to prove.
The visitors dominated the final two periods and skated off with a 4-1 win at Nationwide Arena that dealt the Jackets their second consecutive loss — both to division opponents.
“I haven’t seen it that often with our team, but we were outworked,” Jackets coach John Tortorella said. “They were more tenacious. And the result is what was deserved, if not even more, quite honestly.”
The Jackets started the night first in the division, one point ahead of
the Devils and New York Islanders and five ahead of the sixth-place Washington Capitals, who beat Columbus on Saturday night.
The Devils were “spanked” by the Coyotes 5-0 that same night, Tortorella noted, so the Jackets knew they were going to come out hard. And they did.
Travis Zajac gave the Devils the lead 4:24 into the game when the Jackets couldn’t control a bouncing puck in their own zone.
Nick Foligno knotted the score at 13:46 by tipping in Oliver Bjorkstrand’s long shot for his third goal in six games.
Even with his team trailing up to that point, Tortorella had considered it “a good first period.” Instead of giving the Jackets momentum, however, that goal marked the start of their spiral downward.
“We lost ourselves after we scored our goal, and then they fed it to us the second and third period, as far as puck battles, the forecheck, their quickness,” Tortorella said. “We had (42) shots. (Goalie Cory Schneider) probably saw (41) of them. The only shot he didn’t see was the goal. So don’t get fooled by the shots.”
Schneider finished with 41 saves, and Tortorella was irked that, by his count, the Devils had 11 scoring chances on second attempts and “we had zero. Zero rebounds. That tells Assisted on the Devils’ first goal and scored with 46 seconds left in the second period.
Game summary
New Jersey Columbus 1 2 1—4 1 0 0—1 1, New Jersey, Zajac 1 (Noesen, Johansson), 4:24. 2, Columbus, Foligno 6 (Bjorkstrand, Jones), 13:46. Penalties— Zajac, NJ, (tripping), 11:44; Vatanen, NJ, (holding),
you a lot about the mindset and how we played that second and third period.”
Center Lukas Sedlak said, “They out-competed us. They were hungrier than us. They
New Jersey 11-13-12—36. Columbus 16-11-15—42.
New Jersey 0 of 1; Columbus 0 of 6. New Jersey, Schneider 11-5-3 (42 shots-41 saves). Columbus, Bobrovsky 14-7-1 (36-32). 14,282 (18,500).
2:26. won more puck battles, skated faster and beat us to the loose pucks, won all the 50-50 battles. That’s what cost us today.”
Taylor Hall tapped in a beautiful feed from Nico Hischier at 4:47 of the second period to give the Devils a 2-1 edge, and they pushed their lead to two goals with 46 seconds left before intermission when Sergei Bobrovsky blocked Miles Woods’ shot, but the puck trickled behind Bobrovsky as his mask was knocked off and Stefan Noesen poked it in.
“We just didn’t have a good second (period),” defenseman Seth Jones said. “We fed the momentum of the game to them with our turnovers in the neutral zone.”
Jesper Bratt scored with 8:54 left to ice the game. Bobrovsky made 32 saves in his second consecutive defeat.
“We didn’t come out with the result we wanted,” Foligno said. “Credit to them. They played the right way the whole game and we didn’t. That’s really the difference.”