Fifty-six minutes.
For 56 minutes, John Tortorella’s confidence in the Stanley Cup Qualifying series felt prescient. As if he knew something.
The night before, the Columbus Blue Jackets completed a remarkable comeback, first falling behind the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-0 at the midpoint of Game 3 then surging for three goals in regulation and a game-winner with less than two minutes remaining in overtime. Afterward, he told reporters he wanted his team to “have a ball right now” because he trusted “they’ll be ready to go tomorrow.”
Tomorrow came, and tomorrow almost went without a hitch. But suddenly, late in a game that most casual observers had given up on, disaster struck.
Trailing 3-0 with 3:57 remaining between his team and elimination from the postseason, William Nylander got Toronto on the board. Less than a minute later, John Tavares sent a puck past goaltender Elvis Merzlikins to chop the deficit to one goal. Zach Hyman then proceeded to suck all excitement out of Columbus by scoring with 23 seconds remaining to tie the game at three goals apiece, sending it into overtime.
An unadulterated collapse.
“We just stopped moving our feet, kind of stayed back and stopped forechecking the last five, and they took advantage of it,” Seth Jones said afterward.
With momentum on their side, the Maple Leafs needed a little over 13 minutes of overtime play before Auston Matthews ended it with a shot snuck over Merzlikins’ left leg that left him speechless – “I don't even know what to say.” Matthews’ score came 10 seconds after officials sent Nick Foligno to the box to serve a two-minute tripping penalty, leading to the power play that decided the game shortly thereafter.
Tortorella, as expected, said he’s “not going to explain it,” and Cam Atkinson took a similar tact.
“I’m not going to dissect this one,” Atkinson said. “It’s a series for a reason. They clearly wanted it more than us. We’ll be ready to go Sunday.”
"I'm not going to dissect this one. It's a series for a reason. They clearly wanted it more than us. We'll be ready to go for Sunday." - Cam#CBJ | @pedialyte pic.twitter.com/0G9zRdzdVi
— x-Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) August 8, 2020
The sting of Friday’s game might take a bit to wear off, of course. A shot by Pierre-Luc Dubois against an empty net barely went wide. Had it gone in, Columbus would have, in all likelihood, clinched the series victory.
Instead, they’re one Game 5 loss on Sunday from Toronto sending them home to go spend the rest of the summer on the beach watching the dolphins – or whatever people with some money do when looking to get away from the world.
However, even all the doom-and-gloomers reeling from an unmistakable collapse should remain hopeful.
“This is what happens in a series,” Jones said. “The ups and down, it’s a roller coaster. We’ve got to try to stay as even-keeled as we can and deal with these ebbs and flows. We’re not going to dwell on it. We’re going to put it behind us and get ready for Game 5.”
If there’s one lesson to take away from this series, it’s to realize just how quickly everything can change, both within games and within the series.
In Game 1, the Blue Jackets utilized their physical, forechecking style to stymie a fearsome Maple Leafs offense that rarely found open looks versus goaltender Joonas Korpisalo. Atkinson snuck in a goal in the third period, and Alexander Wennberg added another for a victory. In the aftermath, Tortorella accurately said, “There’s nothing special we’re doing.”
Two days later, the Maple Leafs smoked Columbus. The starkness between what happened on Tuesday and what had transpired two days prior couldn’t go unnoticed. Toronto poured dozens of shots at Korpisalo whose steady performance kept his team in the game without any avail. The Blue Jackets’ lackluster offense went cold, leading to a 3-0 loss.
Game 3 came around and it felt like more of the same for 30 minutes – until Tortorella inserted Merzlikins trailing 3-0. Out of absolutely nowhere, Columbus turned it on offensively with Dubois recording a hat trick to pull off an overtime win.
Then came Friday, when the Blue Jackets continued rolling for 56 minutes. By the time the 57th minute rolled around, they were hanging onto a one-goal lead, which they would lose with 23 seconds to go in regulation.
“We had confidence. We didn’t panic or anything,” David Savard said. “I think we just stopped moving our feet. We just need to keep getting on the forecheck and we would have been fine. But we move past it and we get ready for Game 5.”
Torts speaks to the media following Game 4. #CBJ | @pedialyte pic.twitter.com/dEkAmzdJsS
— x-Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) August 8, 2020
Jones was right; this has been a roller coaster. The mess of Friday’s game might as well have been the Top Thrill Dragster, with Columbus shooting into the air only to come racing back to Earth, discombobulated and distressed.
Yet even after sitting down for a ride that might’ve made a few people wearing Columbus jerseys want to puke, there’s no justification for any Blue Jackets to pout. Things can turn around with haste.
“I think we've just got to play to our strengths, what makes us successful,” Boone Jenner said. “It's a do-or-die game on Sunday, so it's got to be our best.”
That attitude worked on Sunday, Thursday and the first 56 minutes of Friday’s game, so nobody has any good reasons why they would abandon it going forward – even after one of the franchise's most devastating collapses ever.
