\u201cHe played like a man possessed and gets the first one,\u201d Coyle said. \u201cWhen your captain is going like that and your leaders are playing that way, it\u2019s not hard to follow up and have everyone doing their part and playing for the team.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
2. The Blue Jackets took the wind out of the sails of the Montreal crowd by dominating the opening minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Columbus knew what was on the line in this one, as a loss in game No. 80 would have put the team\u2019s playoff hopes on life support. The Blue Jackets got some help early in the day as the Islanders lost to the Senators, and the playoff path is now\u00a0fairly simple\u00a0after Saturday night\u2019s win and Philadelphia\u2019s triumph over Winnipeg \u2013 win the last two and have the Flyers drop two points, and\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0in.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, though, they had to take care of business against the Canadiens, and that was no easy task. A capacity crowd of\u00a020,962\u00a0filled Centre Bell, and the building was positively buzzing before opening faceoff to support a team that entered the game in the running for the Atlantic Division title.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the Blue Jackets were ready, putting 10 shots on goal in the first\u00a05:42\u00a0and taking a 2-0 lead. Jenner started things off just 1:13 into the game, as Montreal goalie Jakub Dobe\u0161 spilled the rebound of a Zach Werenski\u00a0shot\u00a0and Jenner was there to collect and backhand it home. Columbus continued to push, and Coyle made it 2-0 as he put Jake Christiansen\u2019s cross-crease feed past Dobe\u0161\u00a0just shy of the six-minute mark.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cListen, you\u00a0gotta\u00a0love playing in Montreal,\u201d Bowness said. \u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0Saturday\u00a0night, Hockey Night in Canada, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0such a great atmosphere here and they have an excellent hockey club over there.\u00a0They\u2019re\u00a0fast,\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0skilled, so we needed to get off to the start we did. And again, look who came through \u2013 Charlie and Boone. Give the veterans all the credit in the world to get us off on the right foot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Montreal battled back in the latter half of the period to cut it to 2-1, but the Blue Jackets were able to\u00a0build on\u00a0their game from there. Columbus had a 27-5 edge in shot attempts at 5-on-5 in the second and extended the lead to 4-1 on goals from Marchenko \u2013 a beauty of a snipe\u00a0on\u00a0the rush \u2013 and Monahan, then survived a bit of a chaotic third thanks in part to Coyle\u2019s power-play goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it all started, well, with the start, and the Blue Jackets kept it going for the full 60 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was big,\u201d Coyle said. \u201cOur start was\u00a0pretty solid. \u2026 It helps to get rewarded for your play right away. I think that can enable you to stay on that right track that we were on, coming out hard, being on top of them, forcing turnovers with our forecheck and then taking the puck to the net when we can. Having our D jump in, winning wall battles, that all led to our first couple of goals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
3. The Blue Jackets stuck with the plan offensively and were rewarded with the five-goal output.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s 5-0 loss at Buffalo was frustrating for a lot of reasons, but the biggest may have been that Columbus felt the final score\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0indicative of the way the team had played. Buffalo goalie Colten Ellis made 37 saves, and the Blue Jackets\u00a0believed\u00a0they generated offense throughout the game but just\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0get some good looks\u00a0by\u00a0the netminder.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bowness said the Blue Jackets had to just play the same way in Montreal, and to that end, he\u00a0largely kept\u00a0the lines together that the team\u00a0utilized\u00a0as Thursday\u2019s game went on. The reward came in Montreal, as Columbus scored five times, with all five goals coming\u00a0from forwards.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t score in Buffalo, but we created a lot of good chances,\u201d Bowness said when asked about the line combinations. \u201cWe had a couple of games where we\u00a0weren\u2019t\u00a0generating anything, we\u00a0weren\u2019t\u00a0generating any shots, so we changed things up. Even though we\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0score in Buffalo, we created a lot of good chances.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On paper, it\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0look like a good matchup for the Blue Jackets going in, as Columbus had scored just 10 goals in its\u00a0previous\u00a016 games, while Montreal had allowed only 11 in its\u00a0previous\u00a021 contests. As it turned out, the Blue Jackets had two goals just six minutes in, and Montreal ended up allowing\u00a0five\u00a0tallies for the first time since March\u00a06.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And if anything was indicative of the way the Blue Jackets got their goals, it would be this stat \u2013 Coyle\u2019s two tallies traveled a combined 13 feet, according to the official NHL statistics. The veteran forward got to the net on both and capitalized on a pair of perfect feeds from Jake Christiansen on his first goal and Marchenko on his second.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s where they mostly come from,\u201d Coyle said\u00a0of his goals.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0talked more about that \u2013\u00a0when\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0doing the right things and\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0around the net and\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0not\u00a0going\u00a0in,\u00a0you\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0stray away. Even more so, to just stay there and good things will happen. But I was\u00a0just\u00a0on\u00a0the end of\u00a0some\u00a0pretty good\u00a0passes. I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0have to do much.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe played like a man possessed and gets the first one,\u201d Coyle said. \u201cWhen your captain is going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-598787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}