Jackets leapfrog Rangers with win at MSG
NEW YORK, NY -- Most NHL teams struggled immediately after their respective bye weeks this season, but not the Columbus Blue Jackets, who returned to action with a home-ice win Saturday and followed that up with an impressive 5-2 road victory over the New York Rangers Sunday at Madison Square Garden.
The win pushed Columbus past New York into the third place in the Metropolitan Division with 83 points. The Rangers now hold the first wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
Cam Atkinson and Alexander Wennberg both scored a pair of goals for the Blue Jackets, and goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky sparkled with 28 saves while earning his 32nd victory of the season, tying his career high set in 2013-14.
Bobrovsky got the best of New York's Henrik Lundqvist, who surrendered four goals Sunday after allowing only four total in his previous three starts.
Rick Nash and Jesper Fast scored the Rangers, with Fast's goal coming in the final seconds of regulation, shortly after Josh Anderson made it 5-1 for Columbus.
After scoring seven times in a 7-0 rout over the New York Islanders on Saturday, it took the Blue Jackets only 62 seconds to open the scoring Sunday against the Rangers. Wennberg deflected a David Savard slap shot past Lundqvist to give Columbus the quick 1-0 lead.
Nash, the former Blue Jackets captain, answered back at 4:07 with his 18th goal, tying the score, 1-1, two minutes after he was stoned on a clean breakaway by Bobrovsky.
Columbus regained the lead at 6:47 of the first when Atkinson snapped his 28th goal into the back of the net, his power-play tally making it 2-1.
That lead could have been greater before the first intermission, but Brandon Saad was denied on a penalty shot by Lundqvist with 52.2 seconds to play in the period. New York followed with its own near miss at 2:40 of the second when Oscar Lindberg's shot rang off the cross bar behind Bobrovsky.
The Blue Jackets extended their lead to 3-1 at 9:47 of the middle period when Wennberg scored his second of the game, and 12th of the season, off a scramble in front of the Rangers net.
NOTES: The Blue Jackets won the season series with the Rangers 3-2-0, winning both games played at Madison Square Garden. ... Columbus scratched LW Matt Calvert (oblique), D Dalton Prout and D Scott Harrington. ... The Rangers scratched D Kevin Klein (back) for the third straight game, along with RW Pavel Buchnevich and LW Matt Puempel.