A funny thing happened on the way to the Bell Centre on Thursday night. Maybe Columbus was in awe of the rich history surrounding the storied franchise they were about to play. Maybe their clocks were set to the wrong time. Whatever the reason, Columbus somehow missed the start of the game.
Sixty minutes. That's the amount of time from the first drop of the puck until the final horn sounds. That's the amount of time a team needs to be focused and play the game of hockey. That's the amount of time that it took the Canadiens de Montreal to win their fourth game in a row, downing their new Eastern Conference foes 5-3.
"We didn't start the game on time," Columbus head coach Todd Richards said. "We were doing a lot of standing still while they were skating. We talked about it before the game. For whatever reason, our execution and the speed of the game overwhelmed us."
By the time the Blue Jackets realized they needed to play their game rather than trying to keep up with the track meet-pace set by the Habs, Montreal had cruised to 3-0 lead.
Richards focused on the power play goal that Montreal scored less than five minutes into the first.
“That was a brain dead play," he said. "We talked about it before the game and neither one of our defensemen (Nikitin, Savard) knew that the guy was back there.
"That’s just too easy. You can't make those types of mistakes in a game like this."
Columbus woke up midway through the second period. Rookie Boone Jenner, coming off his best game of the season versus Detroit on Tuesday, was slotted in on the top line alongside Cam Atkinson and Brandon Dubinsky, replacing Marian Gaborik, who was out with illness. Although Jenner got the Blue Jackets on the board with his first NHL goal, the memory was not as ebullient as it should have been.
"Yeah, we obviously battled back," Jenner said. "At the end, it's a tough pill to swallow. We have to regroup and be better at certain things. We're going to try and build on the good things that we did."
Accountability and satisfaction go hand in hand with this club. Rather than be dejected, Dubinsky was visibly angry after the game.
"We can't put ourselves in holes," he said. "It's not good enough. It's a game of results and we didn't get two points. We did a lot of good things, but again, it's not good enough.
"We can talk about effort and what we deserve and don't deserve but, we've got to find a way to get it done. We've got to find a way to get two points and win hockey games."
Their passing was not crisp and there were breakdowns in coverage. Too many times, Montreal intercepted passes that missed their mark and started the rush back the other way. After Jenner opened the scoring for Columbus, they began to drive the net more consistently and get bodies in front of Habs goalie Carey Price, waiting for an opportunistic rebound.
Richards frustration was evident with not only the outcome but the play of the game.
"I don't know how the players feel. I know how I feel. You're down (3-0) and you battle back and you tie it. There's a minute to go in the game and the faceoff is in the offensive zone. We have a couple of mistakes in the zone that lead to the rush and the guy (Plekanec) just throws it at the net."
Ryan Johansen, who went 64 percent in the faceoff circle versus Montreal, was as disappointed with the loss as the rest of the club was. He addressed the fact that they didn't play a full 60-minute game.
"You can tell in the first period that we weren't playing our game," he said. "This is a tough one to swallow. We did everything we could for 40 minutes. This one is a tough loss."
Columbus plays the final game of this three game road trip Saturday at Washington against the Capitals and Alexander Ovechkin. The puck drops at 7 p.m.
Short Shifts
