Blue Jackets Defeat Flames in Fight-Filled Game – The Hockey Writers Columbus Blue Jackets Latest News, Analysis & More

The Columbus Blue Jackets and Calgary Flames met on Black Friday afternoon for the first time since the passing of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. The game itself will be remembered for how physical it was.

Adam Fantilli scored twice to help the Blue Jackets improve to 10-9-3 and over hockey .500 with a 5-2 win. After a bit of a slow start, the game picked up in a major way.

Game Recap

The first period started off slowly with both the Flames and Blue Jackets trying to adjust to a 3 P.M. eastern/1 P.M mountain time start in Columbus. But then Nazem Kadri’s holding penalty against Damon Severson opened the door for the Blue Jackets to open the scoring.

Although it wasn’t officially a power-play goal, it might as well have been for Fantilli when he opened the scoring exactly two minutes after Kadri’s penalty. His shot did not deflect off James van Riemsdyk after several reviews. Postgame, Fantilli admitted his goals Friday were big as he was starting to think about his goal slump.

Just under five minutes later, Kent Johnson made it 2-0. He was left plenty of room and made no mistake beating Dustin Wolf. But then the second period started. With that came the fireworks for the game.

Jake Christiansen laid a clean hit on Andrei Kuzmenko. Martin Pospisil came in and challenged Christiansen. He more than held his own in the scrap. That was just the beginning.

Mathieu Olivier boarded Joel Hanley in which Pospisil took exception. It created a third-man in situation that went uncalled. Dean Evason postgame called that a dangerous situation and lucky there were no injuries created. Then to top it off, Ryan Lomberg challenged Olivier and got the worst of it. The crowd became electric as soon as Olivier left the ice asking them to cheer loudly.

Zach Werenski and Blake Coleman traded goals in the second period to make the score 3-1. Fantilli’s second of the game off a great Kirill Marchenko pass made it 4-1. Kadri added a power-play goal to make it 4-2 but then Kirill Marchenko added the empty netter for the 5-2 final.

Elvis Merzlikins stopped 27/29 for the win and was able to help kill a penalty in the third on his own roughing call against MacKenzie Weegar. Wolf stopped 29/33 for the Flames.

The Blue Jackets finished a 3-0-1 homestand and will not practice on Saturday while they travel to Chicago for Sunday’s matinee against the Blackhawks. Meanwhile the Flames play Saturday night in Pittsburgh before heading back home to face the Blue Jackets.