The Columbus Blue Jackets’ road troubles deepened Friday night, November 6, in Buffalo, where the Sabres beat Columbus 5-2 behind a three-goal second period, according to NHL.com’s game recap. Josh Norris scored twice for Buffalo and Owen Power finished with three assists, NHL.com reported, as the Sabres took control of the game in the middle period and never gave it back.
Reuters, in its report on the game, framed the night the same way, describing Buffalo’s three-goal second period as extending the Blue Jackets’ road woes. Columbus fell to 7-8-0 on the season with the loss, according to NHL.com, a record that leaves the Blue Jackets still searching for the consistency that has eluded them away from Nationwide Arena in the season’s opening weeks.
Kent Johnson was Columbus’s most productive forward on the night, recording a goal and an assist, NHL.com reported. The Blue Jackets’ other goal came late, when defenseman Zach Werenski scored on the power play at 18:21 of the third period, according to NHL.com — a goal that cut into the final margin but arrived far too late to change the outcome after Buffalo’s second-period surge.
In net, Jet Greaves made 32 saves for Columbus, NHL.com reported. Greaves faced sustained pressure during the decisive second period, when Buffalo turned a competitive game into a multi-goal lead, and the Blue Jackets’ skaters could not generate enough sustained offense at the other end to answer before Werenski’s late power-play goal.
The loss also carried an injury cost that may matter more than the standings point Columbus did not earn. Sean Monahan left the game with a lower-body injury and Dmitri Voronkov left with an upper-body injury, according to NHL.com. Neither player’s status beyond Friday night was announced in the recap, and the Blue Jackets will await further word on both forwards before their next game.
The Buffalo defeat came one night after a very different finish for Columbus. On Thursday, Werenski tied the game late and the Blue Jackets beat the Dallas Stars 2-1 in a shootout — a result NewsForce247 covered in Werenski tying it late as the Blue Jackets beat the Stars. The back-to-back set showed both sides of this Columbus team in a 48-hour span: resilient enough to steal a shootout win one night, and vulnerable enough to be overwhelmed in a single period the next.
That swing is the story of the Blue Jackets’ first month. A 7-8-0 record, as NHL.com lists it, is not a crisis, but the pattern inside the record is concerning: Columbus has repeatedly let games slip away in one bad stretch, and Friday’s second period in Buffalo — three Sabres goals, per both NHL.com and Reuters — was the latest example of a short lapse deciding an entire night.
Buffalo, for its part, got production through its lineup. Norris’s two goals led the Sabres, Power’s three assists drove the offense from the blue line, and the three-goal second period gave the home team a cushion it protected the rest of the way, according to NHL.com’s recap of the game.
Columbus did not lack for chances to stay in the game, but the recap’s shape tells the story of the night: a competitive game through one period, a three-goal Buffalo second period reported by both NHL.com and Reuters, and a long chase from there. When a team gives up three goals in one period on the road, the rest of the night becomes damage control — protecting its goaltender, hunting a goal to change the momentum, and trying to keep the margin close enough for a late push. Werenski’s power-play goal at 18:21 of the third, reported by NHL.com, finally gave the Blue Jackets that late goal, but with fewer than two minutes left it could only change the scoreline, not the result.
For Columbus’s younger core, nights like Friday are part of the ledger the club has to balance. Johnson’s goal-and-assist performance, reported by NHL.com, was a bright spot on a night with few of them, and Greaves’s 32 saves kept the margin from growing worse during Buffalo’s push. The Blue Jackets’ veterans, meanwhile, left the game with the injury questions surrounding Monahan and Voronkov hanging over the room.
What happens next is, first, medical. The Blue Jackets’ next concrete step is an update on Monahan’s lower-body injury and Voronkov’s upper-body injury, both reported by NHL.com, because how long either forward is out will shape Columbus’s lines far more than one November loss. On the ice, the task is the one Reuters’ road-woes framing points to: Columbus has to stop letting one period on the road decide its games.
Photo: All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0