The Blue Jackets began Tuesday night’s game as one would expect, doing whatever they could to get on the board and notch their first win of the season.
It was no easy task, especially with a red-hot New York Islanders team coming into town off its best performance of the season, but early on, the Blue Jackets carried the play and were generating opportunities. And as has been written in this space too often of late, the wheels came off in the third period.
One of the more complete and efficient opening periods of the season ended unfortunately for Columbus, with a tough bounce resulting in a rebound goal for Nikolai Kulemin with 62 seconds left in the frame. Rather than go into the room with a good feeling and one that could propel them to a better second period, the Blue Jackets were forced to play from behind yet again.
An encouraging sign was a rather docile second period, but the real trouble reared itself in the third.
Thomas Hickey and Cal Clutterbuck scored goals only 2:16 apart – another troubling trend for this Blue Jackets team – to turn a 1-0 lead into a comfortable, commanding three-goal advantage with 6:24 to play.
The final was 4-0, a final margin that doesn’t entirely tell the story of the game, one in which the Blue Jackets pumped 37 shots at Jaroslav Halak and came up empty on six power play opportunities.
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