Three Years Later, Looking Back on the Blue Jackets–Penguins Stanley Cup Playoff Series of 2014

JEFF: The joke has become that my friends thought I was dying.

For some reason I don’t particularly remember, I was home in Lorain, Ohio, for Game 2 of the Jackets’ Stanley Cup playoffs series in 2014 vs. Pittsburgh. One of my good friends in Lorain is a diehard Penguins fan and no one else I know there particularly cares about hockey, so I decided to go to his house to watch. Another friend I went to high school with joined, and he attended the University of Pittsburgh and married a native of the Steel City.

ROB: The only joke for me is that I still get occasional ribbing from my friends about defying all press box etiquette. Usually I'm a stickler for such things, but in this case, the emotion was too much for the moment. I was young, inexperienced and working my first Stanley Cup playoff games. It was a lot. I literally sweated the entire game. It was gross. Sitting on press level at what is now called PPG Paints Arena, I felt some weird pressure that came with covering/tweeting/telling the story of the first Blue Jackets playoff appearance in five years, and I could barely talk to my colleagues between periods. And this was well before all the crazy stuff happened.

JEFF: In other words, I was outnumbered 3-1. And by the end of the first period, the Jackets were down 3-1. It was not going well.

ROB: I remember thinking after the first period of Game 2: "Well, shit. We're going back to Columbus with a lot of work to do." And then I started nervous-eating the famous pretzel nuggets in the press box.

JEFF: Of course, Columbus battled back, and when Jack Johnson scored on the power play in the third period, it was a 3-3 game. Then came one overtime, and another.

And as the whole thing progressed, I got sicker and sicker. Somewhere around the middle of the game, I started getting chills and felt like I was on the brink of throwing up. I don’t think it was the drama – I’ve watched plenty of stressful sporting events in my life. But as the night went on, I was bundled in blankets as my friends kept asking if I was all right. I think they were more amused than anything else, honestly.

ROB: That Jack Johnson goal, for me, was the moment. I said to the person next to me: "We're going to win this. I feel good about it." But of course, there were still six-plus minutes left and every Penguins chance around the net felt like a chaotic ordeal. That's one thing Pittsburgh did really well in the series: they got traffic in multiple layers around Sergei Bobrovsky and made it very difficult for him to get settled. So once the game finally got to overtime, it felt like some weird goal was going to win it. A bounce off a foot, someone's face, literally anything but a legit goal. Thankfully, my stupid gut feelings were dead wrong.

JEFF: Finally, just 1:10 into the second overtime, Matt Calvert whacked at a rebound and then another, roofing a shot over Marc-Andre Fleury for the Jackets’ first-ever playoff win. I was elated, of course, but didn’t feel much better. I think I managed a fist pump and then headed home, but for some reason, when I got in my car, I let out a scream of joy, all the energy from the night finally escaping. Apparently, my friends could hear my yell and wondered if I had lost my mind. We still joke about it to this day.

I was fine, health-wise, the next day, and I made my choice right then that my first Jackets’ jersey purchase would be Matt Calvert. In Jackets’ history, buying a jersey was always a dicey proposition; you never knew if that player would last in union blue. But who could ever go wrong with having the jersey of the guy who scored the first-ever playoff winner?

ROB: I made a complete fool of myself. You'd have thought the Blue Jackets won the Stanley Cup, but honestly, it kind of felt that way. We just watched the team win its first-ever playoff game, and to have it happen like that? My god. You'll never forget it. If you're a Blue Jackets fan, you know where you were when Calvert lifted that rebound under the crossbar and did that skate-and-slide toward center ice. That moment is now immortalized in life-size form on the walls of the team hallway at Nationwide Arena.

JEFF: A few days later, I was six rows from the glass in Nationwide Arena as the Blue Jackets took a 2-0 lead just 3:18 into Game 3, scoring both goals right in front of our seats. It was delirium. Was this really happening? No. The Penguins scored three goals in less than three minutes in the third for the win, setting up a must-win Game 4.

ROB: That game almost didn't feel real. "Numb" comes to mind. After the adrenaline rush of Game 2 and feeling like the Blue Jackets were in the driver's seat going back home with some momentum, the rocking home crowd, etc., to lose that game in what was kind of a lopsided way felt like a punch to the gut. All of a sudden, the Penguins were feeling good again and with a Game 4 win, had a strange-hold on the series. I didn't feel great after Game 3, mainly because it felt like a lost opportunity and the Blue Jackets just didn't play well.

JEFF: I went with to Game 4 with a pair of friends, sitting in the upper bowl. Pittsburgh took an early 3-0 lead, but the Jackets chipped away. We all remember Fleury leaving his net, the puck bouncing to the slot and Brandon Dubinsky scoring to tie the game in the final seconds. I wandered around in a daze during the intermission. This sport really pushes you to the brink as a fan.

ROB: The Blue Jackets lost that series in six games, but I'll be damned if I didn't feel like it was over right there. We were looking at each other in the press box with a collective look of "welp." No one on my team said all that much. We were in shock that these two home games had turned into a nightmare on the heels of all this energy leading up to it. The Dubinsky goal just made me shake my head; I was looking to the person next to me saying "you just knew it" because this team seemed to do a lot of things it wasn't supposed to. The Fleury fumble behind the net was just too perfect. It was the right moment, the right player scoring the tying goal, everything.

JEFF: Then, in overtime, Nick Foligno skated in and threw what appeared to be a harmless shot on goal. It dipped just in front of the net, going under Fleury’s glove for the game-winning goal. The buddy to my right essentially tackled the other two of us in celebration. I didn’t mind. There are only a handful of times in my life where I just didn’t want to leave an arena after a game, and that was one of them.

ROB: I actually forgot to tweet the winning goal. Seriously. Our entire department erupted from our chairs and did this embarrassing group hug, and once I realized I forgot to, like, do my job, I dipped out of the huddle and sent a very mediocre tweet. I think it was like "NICK FOLIGNO!" from @BlueJacketsNHL and I'm still pissed off about that, but the moment was overwhelming. I almost forgot to go downstairs to the locker room, too. I was a disaster.

JEFF: A few nights later, for Game 5, I found myself in another odd place – Alexandria, Va. I had scheduled a road trip to visit some friends in DC, so we found the perfect place to watch the game: Bugsy’s, a sports bar in Old Town owned by longtime NHL player Bryan “Bugsy” Watson. A few people there were surprised to see a Blue Jackets fan in the flesh, which was pretty cool – at least more so than the 3-1 loss the Jackets took.

ROB: I don't know if I'll ever spend as much time in Pittsburgh as I did during that series. It felt like we spent weeks there, but it was really only like six days. Only two trips to Primanti Bros., thank god, but I did go the day of Game 5. I felt like the Blue Jackets were going to win that game. I was convinced. I told my friends: "We're coming home up 3-2." Then Boone Jenner scored the first goal of the game, the Jackets were flying in the first period, and it all seemed to be falling into place. Then the momentum stalled. Pittsburgh willed itself to win and fired almost 50 pucks at Bobrovsky. It was too much.

JEFF: Finally, I returned to Columbus for Game 6 to watch a furious comeback from a 4-0 deficit finish a single goal short. It seemed, at the time, like the start of something big as I left Nationwide Arena.

Now, finally, three years later playoff hockey returns to Columbus, as do the Penguins. Playoff hockey is so compelling because of how much a team puts into each game to try to win it. The desperation and dedication are palpable, like you can reach out and touch them. The sacrifice required is almost immeasurable.

ROB: In the span of a minute, it can make you the happiest person on earth and make you want to throw up. Its a fine line.

JEFF: And then you get overtime, the most gripping spectacle in all of sports. Because the game can end at any time, every rush up the ice is thrilling – or terrifying if it’s the other team. Every shot on goal feels like it can go in, joy and heartbreak always an instant away.

Twice last time, it went the right way for Columbus. I can’t wait to see what happens this time.

ROB: I'm so excited for this. Outside the ropes now, so to speak, I'm going to drink this in. Let's go!