Earlier Thursday, John Tortorella said he wanted the Blue Jackets to play with some arrogance. He wanted them to skate with a strut, and most importantly, get back to feeling good about themselves.
While you don’t need to remind anyone that sports is a results-driven business, but taken on the whole, there was plenty to like about how the Blue Jackets responded at Xcel Energy Center.
They turned the puck over in their own end in the game’s first five minutes which led to an early goal for Zach Parise, but after that, the first period was largely controlled by Columbus. Alexander Wennberg, who earned the trust of Tortorella and saw ice time in all situations, buried a sharp angle rebound later in the first to tie things up.
Brandon Dubinsky, who was probably the best player on the ice on either side, gave the Blue Jackets a 2-1 lead in the closing minutes of the period, burying a back-door pass on the power play.
“Other than 11 or 12 minutes in the second period…I thought we played hard,” Tortorella said. “That’s a team (Minnesota) that defends well and you have to get through a number of layers just to get pucks to the net. There are a lot of good things that went on with our club here.
“Now, we’re 0-8, and moral victories aren’t going to help us right now. But for a number of minutes, I thought we played hard, we won battles on the wall, and played the way I think we have to play to get out of this.”
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