The Columbus Blue Jackets were on home ice and had a chance to take a commanding lead over the Boston Bruins in their best-of-seven series in the second round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs on Thursday night, but it was not meant to be.
Between the seven penalties, two of which led to Bruins power-play goals, and Columbus’ inability to put the puck into the net, the Blue Jackets came out on the wrong end of a 4-1 decision, which evened the series at 2-2.
But despite missing opportunities and allowing others, the Blue Jackets expect a much different showing heading into tonight’s Game 5 matchup at TD Garden in Boston.
“This is why it’s a series,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said after Game 4. “We’ll get ready to play our next game.
“We’re going to bounce back. I have no problem with where we’re going to be when we start the game in Boston.”
And that message was not just delivered by Tortorella.
Following the Game 4 loss, the players in the dressing room echoed Tortorella’s sentiments.
“We don’t have a choice,” defenseman Seth Jones said when talking about bouncing back from the Game 4 loss. “Each game we go here, it gets even bigger. The game gets bigger and the pressure gets even higher, so we’ve got to be ready to go in a tough building to play.
“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, so we’ll go to Boston for Game 5, learn from some things we did (in Game 4) and continue to get better.”
Although the Blue Jackets have won two games in the series, they have had to play from behind in three of the four outings, and should a similar situation develop in Game 5, forward Cam Atkinson is confident the players will respond.
“It is crucial to get the first one, but that being said, we’re a resilient group, and it doesn’t really matter,” Atkinson said. “Obviously, you want to go up first, but we’ve crawled our way back when we’ve been down. That’s what good teams do.”
The Blue Jackets dispatched of the NHL’s best regular-season team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, in an historic first-round sweep of the Presidents’ Trophy winner, but rather than matching up against a finesse team with an ability to generate offense seemingly out of nowhere, they got a grind-it-out scrappy style in Boston.
Now, it is all about building confidence from the positives taken out of Game 4 when the Blue Jackets take the ice in Boston.
“It’s a series for a reason,” Atkinson said.
“We knew that this was going to be a tough series, could go to Game 7. We knew that from the get-go. Right now, for me, it’s 0-0. We take away a lot of good positives from that game and be ready to go for Boston in Boston.”
