The Columbus Blue Jackets hoped to duplicate Thursday night’s performance against the Florida Panthers. Instead, they got into a track meet with the high-powered Pittsburgh Penguins and fell short on Friday night.

Bokondji Imama scored his first goal with the Penguins while the top line of Bryan Rust, Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell had two points each to pace the Penguins to a 6-3 win over the Blue Jackets. Alex Nedeljkovic made 44 saves on the night.

The story of this game was the Blue Jackets inability to get out of an early hole.

Game Recap

The first period saw the Penguins get on the scoreboard first. A pass across the crease reached Zach Werenski. As he tried to make a play, Evgeni Malkin swiped the puck in from behind to open the scoring. Postgame, Werenski admitted thinking he had more time than he did. The rest of the night was a game of catch up.

The Penguins extended to 2-0 thanks to Noel Acciari. Blake Lizotte won a battle on the wall and drove the net. With the puck in front of Elvis Merzlikins, Acciari found the rebound to double the lead.

The Blue Jackets got a big goal from captain Boone Jenner just 16 seconds later. For the captain, it was his first goal in almost a year. There was extra zip in his celebration given what he’s had to come back from.

The momentum of that goal wouldn’t last for long. Just 46 seconds later, Rakell finished off a pretty passing play that started off a turnover. It was 3-1 after the first period. Nedeljkovic stopped 12 of 13 to lift the Penguins to that early lead.

Justin Danforth opened the second with a goal that was put in by defenseman Connor Timmins. That for a short period of time seemed to give the Blue Jackets momentum.

But midway through the second off a faceoff, Imama unleashed a rocket that went off the top of the net and out for his first Penguins’ goal. It also made the score 4-2. Earlier in the game, he dropped gloves with Mathieu Olivier.

Sidney Crosby was able to extend the Penguins’ lead to 5-2 off a nice pass from Matt Grzelcyk. Head coach Dean Evason postgame said that the Blue Jackets looked tired both physically and mentally. He also felt the team tried to cheat for offense.

“Tonight, we forced the issue,” Evason said. “We cheated, got on the wrong sides of things and lost sides of pucks, wrong sides of people and consequently it ended up in our net. That’s not how you play the game. That’s not how we play the game.”

The Blue Jackets got to within 5-3 early in the third on a nice play by Kent Johnson. But that was as close as they could get. Rust converted the empty netter to make it 6-3.

The Blue Jackets will get Saturday off before returning to practice on Sunday. They’ll travel to New York to face the Islanders on Monday night. The Penguins will now head to Florida to take on the Panthers Sunday.