In Columbus, the Blue Jackets trailed the San Jose Sharks, 2-0, and 3-2, on Saturday night, but scored three straight goals in the third period to take a 5-3 win.
Patrik Laine, Gustav Nyquist, and Sean Kuraly (empty-net) scored in the outburst to put the game away for Columbus to end their losing skid at three games.
“Still weren’t perfect by any chance tonight,” Nyquist said. “But I thought we managed the puck a little bit better. Got some timely kills and the power play came through for us and got us going there in the second.
“Our battle level was pretty good today. We won a lot of 50-50 battles that we need to do. All the things that we’ve talked about, we still can do better, but a step in the right direction.”
Joonas Korpisalo made 22 saves in the Blue Jackets win.
The Blue Jackets moved to 14-30-2.
“What I like about it, we gave them 10 shots last two periods,” Columbus coach Brad Larsen said. “That’s probably the coach’s perspective. You gave up 15 in the first but you give up 10 shots the rest of the way. That’s a good game.”
San Jose took a 1-0 lead on a goal from Timo in the fist period.
“It was sloppy,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “We had the 2-0 lead. I don’t know if we thought it was going to be easy because maybe we’re playing a team at the bottom of the standings, but so are we, so I’m not really sure where that attitude would come from.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to effort and the battles we lost tonight. You can tell why we lost the game. They deserved to win.”
Nick Bonino extended the advantage to 2-0 in the middle frame.
Columbus rallied back to tie it on a power play goal from Johnny Gaudreau, and a marker from Boone Jenner for a 2-2 score.
“It was a great team win,” Blue Jackets forward Mathieu Olivier said. “Everyone chipped in. It was fun to watch.”
San Jose dropped to 14-23-9.
“We all know, no offense to that team, but if you look at the other teams we play on this road trip, if we play like that we’re going to get killed,” Quinn said.
The Sharks reclaimed the lad with 1:55 gone in the third on a strike from Nico Sturm.
“We wanted it to be easy,” Sturm said. “We thought it would be easy. We were wrong. We didn’t pay the price to win the hockey game.”
Kaapo Kahkonen made 24 saves in the Sharks loss.
“This is obviously really frustrating on the short end again like that,” Kahkonen said. “I think we all really feel we could have won.”
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