A sleepy Sunday at Nationwide Arena turned into a wild, raucous afternoon for the Blue Jackets .
They lost 5-2 to the Florida Panthers, but the game was just a one-goal difference before Nick Cousins ' illegal hit 24 seconds into the third period. Chasing after a puck dumped into Erik Gudbranson's corner, the Panthers forward lowered his shoulder and drove the Blue Jackets' defenseman hard, face first, into the end boards with a clear hit from behind.
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Cousins' initial contact was with the numbers on Gudbranson 's back, which set the veteran blue-liner off on a retaliatory binge that led to a bushel of penalty minutes, seven-minute Florida power play and, potentially, a suspension coming for Gudbranson. Until all that happened, the main storyline for the Blue Jackets (9-16-5) was captain Boone Jenner , who missed his first game since being struck with the puck and having his jaw fractured Friday against the St. Louis Blues .
Now the focus has shifted to what happens next with Gudbranson and how the Blue Jackets can respond to losing for the fourth time in the past five games.
Here are five takeaways:
Among the things the Blue Jackets have learned the past two seasons about Gudbranson is that he's usually judicious about the way he responds to physical play.
He's the Jackets' de facto "sheriff' and isn't easily set off. It can get ugly fast, however, once the muscle-bound 6-foot-5, 222-pound defenseman's slow-burn fuse reaches the powder keg beneath it. That's usually while coming to the defense of a teammate, but this time the 'sheriff' retaliated on his own behalf.
Gudbranson, who declined reporters' request to talk after the game, took care of matters himself before his four teammates on the ice joined the scrum.
"We like to stick up for each other in groups of fives, and for whatever reason it didn't go that way," forward Sean Kuraly said. "I don't know exactly how it all played out. I'd have to look at it again to see what could've, should've happened, but it transpired the way it did."
Cole Sillinger issued similar comments.
"It doesn't matter who it is, when your teammate gets hit the way that 'Goody' did, I think regardless everyone should be aware and (angry), in a way, that your player was hit like that," Sillinger said. "He got up and went after him himself, for whatever reason, and that's just kind of how it played out."
It should be noted that power forward Mathieu Olivier , the Jackets' "enforcer" up front, watched the whole thing from the press box as a healthy scratch. The other four on the ice with Gudbranson were primarily skill-oriented players. Still, what happened won't be forgotten by either team.
Columbus and Florida are scheduled to finish the season series April 11 in Sunrise, Florida, but hockey teams typically have long memories.
Gudbranson finished the game with 29 penalty minutes for his actions.
That number tied Blue Jackets television analyst and former enforcer Jody Shelley for second all-time in franchise history in a single game. Shelley picked up 29 on Feb. 21, 2003 against the San Jose Sharks . Thre years later, former defenseman Duvie Westcott set the franchise-high at 31 penalty minutes April 13, 2006 against the St. Louis Blues .
Gudbranson's first penalty was for a roughing minor after getting up from the hit, which momentarily left him laid out near the net, and shoving Cousins' face into the glass. That touched off a scrum, but he wasn't done. Gudbranson then touched off an additional melee at 6:49 by spotting Cousins on a rush into the Columbus zone, throwing off his gloves, grabbing him in a bear hug, throwing him to the ice and punching him at least five times while the Panthers forward covered his head.
The NHL's department of player released an update Sunday night that said Gudbranson will have a hearing Monday. It didn't specify whether that hearing will be conducted by phone or in person. Regardless of how it's conducted, those type of hearings are for supplemental discipline and almost always result in suspension. In all, Gudbranson's penalties for the second incident included two minutes for instigating a fight, five minutes for fighting, 10 minutes for misconduct and another 10 minutes for an "instigator" game misconduct.
Blue Jackets assistant Mark Recchi was also assessed a game misconduct in the aftermath and followed Gudbranson down the tunnel.
Gudbranson's penalties resulted in a seven-minute power play for the Panthers, who made it 3-1 with goal scored by Aleksander Barkov 36 seconds before the power play ended. Florida entered the game with the NHL's 22ndranked power play and the Blue Jackets' penalty kill ranked fifth. Had Columbus gotten through those final 36 seconds, the game's outcome might've been different.
Rookie Dmitri Voronkov cut the Panthers' lead to 3-2 with 3:49 left to play in the third, which could've been a tying goal had Florida not gotten a marathon power play. Instead, the Panthers sealed it with two late goals scored into the Blue Jackets' empty net.
"We know our kill's one of the best in the league and we know what we're doing," Kuraly said. "We have our structure, and we believe in it. You don't look at it as 'seven minutes.' It was a minute at a time, and we got (through) about 6 and a half minutes. That's the way it goes. We're not happy about the result, but that's what happens."
This was the Jackets' first game without Jenner, who's almost irreplaceable because of how many things he does for them.
It was a mixed bag of results with Justin Danforth getting the first crack at filling Jenner's role centering a line with Gaudreau and Patrik Laine . Danforth went 6 for 12 on faceoffs, which is solid, but lost faceoffs to Barkov to start two shifts in the first that led to Panthers goals.
Those draws would've been handled by Jenner, who had a 55.9% winning percentage at the dots prior to his injury. It's going to be a struggle for the Blue Jackets to fully compensate, which is why the responsibility doesn't fall on just one guy.
"You can't replace what (Jenner) brings, so what you try to do is by committee, pick pieces that he does and share them between guys and try to bring as much as we can," Kuraly said. "There's a big empty void with him out of that locker room, that's for sure."
If there's a bright side to this loss, it's the Jackets' remaining schedule this month. Sunday's game was their 30thin the season's first 60 days, which works out to an average of a game every other day for the first two months. That's not only challenging physically, but it also limits time between games for practices, video breakdowns and off-ice recuperation.
That's about to change.
They don't play again until Thursday in Toronto and only have eight games remaining in December that will be played over 21 days. Those games will also be split evenly between Nationwide Arena and the road.
"Our schedule, we had the eighth most intense schedule, as far as quality of opponents, and (in) quantity we had the worst," Blue Jackets coach Pascal Vincent said. "We knew until Dec. 10 it's going to be hard, but moving forward … practices, video reviews, meetings with the players, all of that, we're going to be able to catch up."
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Bad hit sets off Gudbranson in Blue Jackets' loss to Panthers: 5 takes
