Columbus Blue Jackets @ San Jose Sharks: Season 25 1/6/26

Hello, 5th Line. First, I'm sorry, I missed Sunday's home game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. I had a chance to help out a coworker and take their shift, so naturally, I did. I'm back for the start of the Western Roadtrip tonight, though, so let's recap some hockey! 

Period 1, the visiting Blue Jackets would finish leading shots on goal, 12-10, but they wouldn't finish leading on the scoreboard. With seconds left in the opening period, at 19:11, Sharks' Pavol Regenda would get his ninth goal this season, giving the home team the first lead of the late-night game. Former Blue Jacket, Alexander Wennberg, gets his twentieth assist this season on the primary, while the secondary assist bumps Tyler Toffoli to seventeen this season. The good news: the Blue Jackets would face the middle period only down a goal. The bad news: the middle period would get worse for the Blue Jackets before it got better. 

The bad news for the Blue Jackets is that they'd take a penalty at 3:18 after Zach Aston-Reese tripped Ryan Reaves. Our team wouldn't be able to kill off the 2-minute power play as former Blue Jacket, Alexander Wennberg, would reach multipoint status (1-1-2) after scoring goal number eight of his season at 4:14. W Eklund comes away with the seventeenth assist of his season on the primary, while D Oriov adds assist number twenty to his season on the secondary. With the Blue Jackets in a two-goal hole, who else could put them on the board but team-leading goal scorer, Zach Werenski? Goal sixteen of his season would come at 19:15, cutting the Sharks' lead back to one! The Primary assist gives Dimitri Voronkov thirteen so far this season, while the secondary gives Kirill Marchenko his nineteenth assist this season. This period would be capped with a Mathieu Olivier, Ryan Reaves fight at 19:16, and Mathieu Olivier would take Ryan Reaves to the ice after a great matchup. Each would get five minutes for fighting, and this one lived up to the definition. The Blue Jackets, even with the late rally, would still be down one goal going into the last twenty minutes of this game. Further, the Sharks dominated the shots on goal in this middle period, 17-6. 

Period 3 would play out as a back-and-forth battle until the Sharks' Zack Ostapchuk scored at 15:16. This would be goal number two of his season, and would have no assists as well. I'm not going to lie, at this point, I expected to report a minimum 3-1 loss, 4-1 if we pulled Jet Greaves and the Sharks banked in an empty-net goal. However, that didn't happen. Seconds later, at 16:05, Sean Monahan would tip the puck in for goal number six of his season! The only assist on this goal would become the eleventh this season for Ivan Provorov. We would pull Jet Greaves, and then the empty net would be scored by Mario Ferraro at 17:46. Alexander Wennberg adds a second assist to his multipoint night, giving him twenty-one assists this season. With the game 4-2 Sharks, the Blue Jackets would bring Jet Greaves back to the visitors' bench, and Macklin Celebrini would add a second empty net goal at 18:31. This gives the young player twenty-three goals this season as he continues making a name for himself in the league. I respectfully don't look forward to playing this kid in the future as he continues to make leaps in his career early. C Graf gets to add assist number eleven to his season on this final goal of the game, while Mario Ferraro adds his eighth on the secondary and gains a multipoint night, 1-1-2. Even though they doubled the Sharks' shots on goal in the final period, 18-9, our Blue Jackets fell 5-2.     

The Third Star of the Game tonight goes to Zack Ostapchuk, who had just one goal, but that goal went down as the game-winner for the Sharks in Period 3. 

Former Blue Jacket, Alexander Wennberg, finished the night with a goal and two assists, allowing him to add on the Second Star of the Game tonight, too. 

Alex Nedeljkovic, who denied 34 of the Blue Jackets' 36 shots on goal, giving him a .944 save percentage, skates away with the First Star of the Game tonight. 

The Blue Jackets will look for redemption at 10:00 p.m. on Thursday night as they travel to Las Vegas to face the Golden Knights. Here's hoping Vegas is lucky for the visitors then. 

Go CBJ!  


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