PITTSBURGH — After the first period Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena, the Blue Jackets were in good shape.
They had a 1-0 lead on the arch-nemesis Pittsburgh Penguins, despite being outshot 12-8, and goalie Joonas Korpisalo looked like he’d begun to shake free from a season’s worth of frustration.
Then the puck dropped to start the second and the Penguins did what they usually do when these teams play in this city. They took over the game, popped in four goals with a 20-7 edge in shots in the middle period and cruised to a 5-1 victory that left the Jackets stewing over a 20-minute letdown.
“It was the whole second,” coach Brad Larsen said. “We made some big mistakes in the middle of the ice that we’d addressed and (had) been doing better at, and we gave them a couple there and they got rolling. You can’t have a second period like that and you give up four goals. The first and third we were fine. We hung in there. The second period got away from us.”
Trailing 1-0 after Gustav Nyquist scored the game’s first goal to cap a power play in the first, Pittsburgh wasted no time adjusting the scoreboard in the second. Radim Zohorna tied it 1-1 at 2:40 by scoring off a rebound, Jake Guentzel made it 2-1 at 3:16 — a span of 36 seconds — and the Penguins (39-16-9) continued the onslaught with additional goals by Bryan Rush at 7:28 and Guentzel again to make it 4-1 with 5:54 left in the period.
“I thought we started off the game well,” said Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski, whose shot led to an assist on Nyquist’s goal. “They were getting some chances. I thought ‘Korpi’ made some big saves. And then in the second there, they put their big push on and we didn’t really have an answer for it. We got away from our structure and the next thing you know, we’re down 4-1.”
