In a card worth of a WWE pay-per-view, the Pittsburgh Penguins and Columbus Blue Jackets squared off on Saturday night.
The Penguins and Blue Jackets played physically all night long and they racked up 88 penalty minutes, including fights between Bobby Farnham and Jordan Leopold and Steve Downie and Brandon Dubinsky.
Through 65 minutes, however, the fight card, and the scoreboard, was all square, and it came down to a one-on-one battle between goaltenders Sergei Bobrovsky and Thomas Greiss in the shootout.
Bobrovsky was able to stop Evgeni Malkin and Brandon Sutter while Cam Atkinson and Boone Jenner beat Greiss to give Columbus a 4-3 shootout victory at Nationwide Arena.
Bobrovsky stymied the Penguins all night, as he stopped 33 of 36 Pittsburgh shots. The Penguins outshot the Blue Jackets 36 to 27.
Kris Letang provided most of the offense for the Penguins. His slapshot from the left wing faceoff circle beat Bobrovsky at 19:49 of the third period and allowed the Pens to force overtime and earn a point in the standings.
Letang had two goals on the night, his 5th career multi-goal game. The first came on a shorthanded two-on-one with Craig Adams early in the third period. Adams made a pass around the Columbus defender to Letang, who went to his backhand to beat Bobrovsky and give the Penguins a 2-1 lead.
4:30 later, Jenner was hauled down by Simon Despres and scored on the ensuing penalty shot to tie the game at two. Then at 17:49 of the third period, Jack Johnson scored to give Columbus the lead.
Columbus started out with a lead when Nick Foligno scored the first goal of the night with 16:58 left in the first period. Blake Comeau created a 1-1 tie by scoring his tenth goal of the season with assists from Rob Klinkhammer and Paul Martin during the second period.
The first period was especially rough, with Steve Downie and Dalton Prout each earning 14 penalty minutes after Brandon Dubinsky took a charging penalty against Downie. Farnham and Leopold then dropped the gloves.
“I wanted to be physical right off the bat,” said Farnham “It’s the best way for me to get into the game.”
Farnham had a hit to go along with his fight in 5:31 of ice time in his NHL debut. Downie finished with 29 penalty minutes, giving him 114 on the season and extending his league lead.
Bryan Rust also made his NHL debut for the Penguins, and had four penalty minutes and a hit in 6:032 of ice time.
