COLUMBUS, Ohio — After Thursday’s shutout loss to the Vegas Golden Knights, Columbus Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason reasoned that his struggling club needed “something good to happen early” in Saturday’s game against the New York Rangers.
But like so much else over the last two weeks, the opposite happened.
The Blue Jackets are suddenly playing with an almost unbearable level of panic and fragility, and it took only 1:43 for the Rangers to expose it on Saturday. The Jackets botched the same play twice, fell behind early yet again, and lost 4-0 before a beyond-capacity crowd of 18,464 in Nationwide Arena.
Who are these guys? And where did the upstart Blue Jackets go?
That’s two straight shutout losses, and three shutouts in their last five games. Yes, the Blue Jackets, one of the NHL’s highest-scoring clubs all season, now can’t buy a goal.
This was the fifth time in six games that the Blue Jackets have allowed the first goal of the game. This from the club that has been one of the NHL’s top score-first clubs all season.
By losing five of their last six games, the Blue Jackets are no longer holding on to a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Both the Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens leapfrogged the Blue Jackets with wins on Saturday, landing New York in the second wild-card spot and the Jackets in 10th place.
Since the Blue Jackets’ win in the Stadium Series game at Ohio Stadium, they haven’t looked the same. Evason has recognized it, too.
“I’ll be honest with you, there was some frustration at the end (of the game),” Evason said. “You could tell that we were frustrated. When you get frustrated, you kind of throw some blame around, and we haven’t done. We’ve stuck together. That’s what our message was after (the game) and will be again moving forward.
“The guys care so much, right? They’re trying to do the right thing. Maybe they haven’t been through it (a playoff race), but who cares? Now we’ve been through it a little bit here. We have to continually stay together and battle and believe that we’re going to get the job done.”
It’s the Blue Jackets’ youth that has carried them offensively most of the season, and it’s that youth that is being tested now. These games are not being played at a playoff-level intensity, but they are definitely ramped up from earlier in the season.
Every inch of ice is contested. Pretty plays don’t win games. Ugly goals get the job done.
The Blue Jackets’ top line — center Adam Fantilli, with wingers Kent Johnson and Kirill Marchenko — are all three new to a playoff push. So are the two wingers, Dmitri Voronkov and Yegor Chinakhov, who flank veteran Boone Jenner on the second line.
But nobody wants to hear about a learning curve at this point in the season.
“We don’t want any excuses,” Fantilli said. “It’s hockey. We’re all good players here. We have to be better. I’m pointing the finger at myself first. I have to be better. I have to make better plays. If I create something, maybe it’s a different game.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s my first time or my tenth time going through this, I need to be playing at the top of my game. Right now, it’s not good enough.”
The Blue Jackets’ best chance to score came at 8:12 of the second period, when Voronkov was one-on-one with Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin. Voronkov, whose hands belie his size, made a nifty move to get Shesterkin lunging and missing at the puck.
But with an open net to shoot upon, Voronkov’s shot from seven feet away sailed across the crease, hit the far post and caromed out of harm’s way.
“Two games in a row we don’t score a goal,” Marchenko said. “Not good enough. We have good chances. We have shots on the net the last two games. We don’t have goals. Maybe we need to work harder.
“It’s a battle for the playoffs. Everybody wants to be in. Everybody tracks (pucks) and plays the body. It’s harder for all guys, but we can do it. We play all season in a good way. We need to stay in this way now.”
The Blue Jackets’ current stretch without scoring a goal — 129 minutes, 31 seconds — is their longest stretch of the season. The second-longest? A 95-minute, 7-second stretch just one week ago in the first three games of a road trip following the outdoor game.
Mika with the steal + Laf puts it away. pic.twitter.com/uvsaDnzNWz
— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) March 15, 2025
But the numbers are ugly in the other direction, too.
The Blue Jackets have allowed a goal on the first shot of the game in two straight games and three times in their last six outings. The one they coughed up on Saturday was a two-man effort.
Veteran defenseman Damon Severson had the puck stripped off his stick by Rangers’ forward Mika Zibanejad in the neutral zone, sending it into the Blue Jackets zone with enough pace to reach the corner. That’s not an easy read for a goaltender on the first touch of the game, and Blue Jackets’ starter Daniil Tarasov ended up in no-man’s land.
Zibanejad got to the puck first, and zipped it off his backhand to Alexis Lafreniére for the easy tap-in before Tarasov could get back in position.
“Puck just came back. Tarry just missed it,” Severson said. “I think he expected it to come off the boards a little quicker and it didn’t, and then it was out of his trapezoid and he kind of got caught there.
“I was going back, battling with the guy (Zibanejad) and it was kind of a cluster of bad things that could happen.”
And right like that, the Blue Jackets were down. Evason was exasperated that the harm was done mostly by the Blue Jackets, not the Rangers.
“To have that first goal go in in the manner it went in?” Evason said. “There’s nothing there. It’s not like they’re coming. There’s nothing there. It ends up in our net. We need one of those to come our way, but we need to work toward that as well.”
(Photo: Joseph Maiorana / Imagn Images)
