The Tampa Bay Lightning never pulled their goaltender on Saturday night.
Yet when Emil Bemstrom ripped a shot on a first-period 5-on-3 in the first-round Stanley Cup playoff matchup, goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy might as well have been at the team hotel. Focused on Seth Jones and expecting him to make a pass across the ice, Vasilevskiy found himself out of position when the fake-out pass instead ended up going Bemtrom’s way.
A wide-open net on the left side proved to be too much to handle. Bemstrom bounced the puck off of the post, keeping the game scoreless.
If Bemstrom can’t sleep after the game, anybody watching that shot rattle off the side of the cage would understand.
“You could play the what-if game all you want,” Riley Nash said. “If we get three goals out of that, we're up 3-0. It's a totally different ballgame. But it doesn't happen. That's hockey. You've got to adapt and play on. I don't think it really took any momentum away.”
The Blue Jackets’ issue, however, is that what Nash says is objectively true – unexpected things happen in NHL games that sometimes do and sometimes don’t go your way – yet they aren’t built to overcome them. They have a grimy, physical style of play that suits a John Tortorella team. As a whole, the group has bought into a relentless attitude that helped it battle through a hailstorm of injuries throughout the regular season.
When that doesn’t work, Columbus isn’t going to suddenly become something else. Not because it doesn’t want to, but rather because it’s unable to do so.
The Blue Jackets are built to play as Tortorella wants at all times, and in a 3-2 loss in Game 3 of a first-round series against the Lightning, they didn’t – or, as Tortorella sees it, couldn’t.
“The recap for that game is I thought we played probably our best 11 or 12 minutes of the series so far to start the game,” Tortorella said. “We just, as a group, we've been waiting a little bit here – I thought it was going to be the prior game – about hitting a wall with all the hockey that we've played. I have to figure that's what happens tonight because it was the whole group of us. From the 12-minute mark of the first period, we're not the team we need to be, obviously, in the series.”
"I thought we played our best 11 or 12 minutes of the series to start the game... It was the whole group of us from the 12 minute mark were not the team we need to be in the series." - Torts#CBJ | @pedialyte pic.twitter.com/MVEK9ErIFo
— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) August 16, 2020
At the beginning of Saturday’s matchup, Columbus came out firing.
Penalties on Pat Maroon, Zach Bogosian and Blake Coleman in the first eight minutes opened up plenty of opportunities for the Blue Jackets, who found some openings yet struggled to finish them. They held a 9-2 advantage in shots on goal at one point in the first period, which felt like a long time coming for a team that had been outshot by double-figures for the past four games.
It, uh, didn’t last.
The rest of the evening, Tampa Bay held a 32-8 edge in shots on goal, with the Lightning stifling the Blue Jackets whenever it seemed as though they might get something going. Columbus had only four shots on goal in the second period and three shots on goal in the third period despite Joonas Korpisalo getting pulled from in front of the net for the game’s final couple of minutes.
“Just didn't seem to have it,” Seth Jones said. “It must've been one of those games. We'll have a good practice tomorrow and be ready for the next game.”
Columbus can’t afford to have too many of “those games.” They’re the games that quickly turn this team from dangerous to pedestrian.
To advance to the second round, the Blue Jackets need energy. Physicality. Resiliency. Something they just didn’t have on Saturday.
“That's a group effort,” Tortorella said. “It's not a team that I've seen in quite a while.”
"It's going to be a battle all the way to the finish." - Riley Nash#CBJ | @pedialyte pic.twitter.com/BasPZJYUU9
— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) August 16, 2020
Bemstrom missed an open net. Korpisalo let a saveable puck go through his knees. Some teams are built to overcome mistakes like those. Not Columbus.
Every single play matters, and when the Blue Jackets don’t convert or Korpisalo lets a goal or two in that he shouldn’t, they struggle to come back – especially from a multi-goal deficit in the third period.
“It just was not a good game by us,” Tortorella said. “Give them credit. But I think we've been teetering there, as far as what's going to go on with some of our guys, because it's been quite a bit of hockey from the Qualifier starting the playoffs right away – we were the first game. I think I'm going to put it up to that because it's the whole group. That's the thing that kind of determines it for me. It wasn't one person. It was a whole group of men that struggled tonight.”
Games like these can happen in the postseason, even if NHL teams do everything they possibly can to avoid them. The Blue Jackets now face a 2-1 series deficit, which shouldn’t feel overly discouraging.
They’ll get an opportunity to bounce back on Monday afternoon in Game 4, when they’ll aim to continue their eerie back-and-forth postseason trend of never winning or losing twice in a row.
A 2-0 Win.
A 3-0 Loss.
A 4-3 Win.
A 4-3 Loss.
A 3-0 Win.
A 3-2 Loss.
A 3-1 Win.
A 3-2 Loss.
Eventually, one would think this trend has to end. But it’s up to Columbus to return to form and ensure it doesn’t stop on Monday.
