BLUE JACKETS COME HOME WITH SURPRISING 2-0 SERIES LEAD
Lightning will be without NHL’s top scorer in Game 3.
TAMPA, FLA. — Frustration crept in early, after the Blue Jackets scored two first-pe- riod goals Friday night that made the locals restless at Amalie Arena.
By the end of the second — with the Jackets ahead by three goals in a game they won 5-1 for a 2-0 lead in an Eastern Conference quarterfinal series many assumed they’d lose in four or five games — the concerns of Tampa Bay Lightning fans had built into a cascade of boos.
“I think the fans were in the same spot we were,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “Everybody was frustrated.”
Also, a little baffled. Is this actually happening? To the Lightning? Courtesy of the Blue Jackets, a team it rolled in three games during the regular season?
Is a team that easily skated away with the Atlantic Divi- sion and earned the NHL’s Presidents’ Trophy being outplayed by a team that scratched and clawed just to clinch the Eastern Conference’s final wild-card spot in the next-to-last game of the regular season?
Short answers: Yes, yes, yep and you betcha.
Owners of a shocking 4-3 comeback victory in Game 1 on Wednesday, the Blue Jackets continued their roll to start the Stanley Cup playoffs by stinging the Lightning again, not to mention its fans and everybody else watching how the series has unfolded.
Matt Duchene had a goal and three assists to lead the charge, setting up Cam Atkinson and Zach Werenski in the first, scoring himself in the second and feeding Artemi Panarin for the game’s final goal at 12:15 of the third.
Panarin had a goal and an assist. Werenski had a goal, an assist and fought Lightning center Brayden Point late in the first to earn a Gordie Howe hat trick.
Riley Nash scored a big one, countering Tampa Bay’s lone goal scored five minutes into the third period by Mikhail Sergachev with the first playoff goal of his NHL career. After the Blue Jackets killed off a Lightning power play that could have made it a one-goal game, Nash put the Jackets ahead 4-1.
“Obviously, it feels good,” Nash said. “It’s a good goal, and it’s just nice to chip in. We’ve had a lot of guys lug the mail offensively for us a lot of the year, so to be able to help out ... if we can chip in (as a line) every once in a while, it’s always good for our confidence. It’s like a pat on the back.”
Quite a few of those were doled out in the Blue Jackets’ locker room after these first two games.
“They go up 3-0 in the first period (of Game 1), I’m sure, you know, they thought they were going to ... that it’d probably be an easier game,” Atkinson said, stopping himself short of a potential boast.
It felt like everybody had written the Blue Jackets off before the first puck was dropped, as Atkinson pointed out before Game 2.
Everybody, that is, “except us in the locker room.”
NHL leading scorer Nikita Kucherov has been suspended for Game 3 of Tampa Bay’s first-round series against Columbus.
Kucherov was suspended for boarding Columbus defenseman Markus Nutivaara late in Tampa Bay’s 5-1 loss in Game 2. Kucherov was given a major penalty and ejected for hitting Nutivaara in a defenseless position with 4:26 remaining in the lopsided defeat.
The Presidents’ Trophy-winning Lightning also could be without banged-up defenseman Victor Hedman. The defending Norris Trophy winner did not practice Saturday.