Another sellout crowd at Nationwide Arena went home mostly unhappy Saturday night.
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Despite starting strong, the Blue Jackets couldn’t get a goal from their early pressure, allowed three unanswered goals afterward and lost 4-2 to the Tampa Bay Lightning in front of 18,876 who set a season-high attendance mark in Columbus.
Johnny Gaudreau set up two goals for Boone Jenner late in the third to make things interesting, but the Lightning put the game away on Brandon Hagel’s empty-net goal with 47.9 seconds to play.
“We had lots of momentum there,” Jenner said. “We got two with four minutes left and I liked our push, but obviously we couldn’t find that third one.”
Hagel had a goal and two assists to lead the Lightning (28-20-5), who also had multi-point games from Nicholas Paul (goal, assist), Anthony Cirelli (goal, assist) and Nikita Kucherov (two assists). Steven Stamkos also scored a goal for Tampa Bay, which was backed by Andrei Vasilevskiy’s strong 33-save performance.
Elvis Merzlikins also made 33 saves for the Blue Jackets (16-25-10), who lost in their first game coming out of a break that began following a 1-0 victory Jan. 30 in St. Louis.
bhedger@dispatch.com
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Blue Jackets’ push not enough against Tampa Bay Lightning