Who: Columbus Blue Jackets (31-28-9, 71 points, 6th place Metropolitan Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (28-32-10, 66 points, 7th place Metropolitan Division)

When: 7:00 p.m. ET

How to Watch: Local broadcasts on Sportsnet Pittsburgh and Fan Duel Sportsnet Ohio, streaming on ESPN+

Pens’ Path Ahead: Closing up a five-game homestand tonight, the road is ahead for the Penguins. They’ll be in Florida for a game on Sunday (note the odd 6:00pm start) and then stick around in the Sunshine State for another game against Tampa on Tuesday. Then it’s up to Buffalo next Thursday to complete a partial tour of the Atlantic Division.

Opponent Track: Since their big win in the Big House in the Stadium Series on March 1st, the Blue Jackets have slumped to 1-6-1 after last night’s 1-0 OT loss against Florida. Columbus needs to dig deep on the second night of a back-to-back in their push for a first playoff berth in five years. This March slip now has them on the outside looking in and they need to reverse course quickly as they’re running out of track.

Season Series: Columbus is looking for a season sweep of Pittsburgh! The Blue Jackets won 6-2 back on November 15th and then took a 3-2 shootout decision on January 7th. Sadly there are only three PIT/CBJ games this season and tonight is the last one.

Hidden Stat: Related to the above, the Penguins (0-1-1) could earn a season split with CBJ with a Pittsburgh win tonight (though Columbus would be 2-1 or 2-0-1 from their perspective). Per Pens PR, Pittsburgh has dropped the season series with Columbus just once (2014-15) since the formation of the Metropolitan Division in 2012. Tonight would become the second time if the Blue Jackets win this game.

Getting to know the Blue Jackets

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Kent Johnson – Adam Fantilli – Kirill Marchenko

Dmitri Voronkov – Boone Jenner – Yegor Chinakhov

Zach Aston-Reese – Justin Danforth – Mathieu Olivier

James van Riemsdyk – Sean Kuraly – Luke Kunin

DEFENSEMEN

Zach Werenski / Dante Fabbro

Danton Mateychuk / Ivan Provorov

Jack Johnson / Damon Severson

Goalies: Daniil Tarasov (and Elvis Merzlikins who started last night vs FLA)

Scratches: Christian Fischer, Jake Christiansen, Jordan Harris

IR: Sean Monahan, Cole Sillinger, Kevin Lebanc, Erik Gudbranson

—It’s wild that in almost 25 years of existence the Blue Jackets have never truly had a stable, great first line center (the first four seasons of a young Ryan Johansen, the pluggers like Jenner and Ryan Dubinsky and a later short-term trade deadline pickup of Matt Duchene don’t seem like enough to qualify). That could be changing with Fantilli growing into the mold. The pure stats don’t pop but putting up 20+ goals in the NHL in his draft+2 at age-20 and looking like the sky is the limit is a very long overdue development for this club. Monahan put up 41 points in 41 games before he got hurt to arguably give Columbus the best 1-2 punch down the middle that they’ve ever had.

—Sticking with that theme, Werenski is the franchise defenseman that they’ve rarely had (six years of prime Seth Jones does count for something). Werenski has tied his for career-high in goals (20) and hit personal bests in assists (49) and points (69). He’s also pacing the league by averaging a whopping 27:00 of ice time per game. Cale Makar has pulled way ahead in betting odds for the Norris trophy as the league’s top defenseman, it’s tough to argue he’s not No 1 – but damn if Werenski isn’t right on his heels.

Player stats

(via hockeydb)

Note: does not include last night’s game

—Olivier, known for being a tough guy and fighter, has turned into a lot more- at least for this season. Prior to last night’s action he had 5G+1A in the last eight games and parlayed his big year into an $18 million contract extension over the next six seasons. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with him moving forward, he only had 13 career goals (in 168 games) entering this year and has already more than doubled that. They obviously love him as a lockerroom guy and protection force but it remains to be seen if he can continue to be as productive of a player.

—It’s a wonder the Blue Jackets are still hanging in there despite the weak goaltending inputs. Their special teams are hardly remarkable either.

The secret to their moderate amount of success is easily identifiable above, it’s been scoring goals and a run of hot shooting. Their 155 5v5 goals ranked second in the NHL as of yesterday, and their 10.2% 5v5 shooting percentage was third. Players popping well above that average are Kent Johnston (21 goals, 21.0% shooting), James van Riemsdyk (14 goals, 20%), Olivier and Dmitri Voronkov (20 goals, 16.4% shooting). That’s a charmed bunch and good time when so many players are hot and many are kicking in more than expected.

By contrast, Pittsburgh only has two skaters with 25+ games that are north of 15% shooting (Blake Lizotte, who only has nine goals in a fourth line role and Rickard Rakell’s 31 goals).

As a good but not great team, Columbus has their share of stinkers but they’re in the Wild Card chase because when they’re good they’ve made it count, and they’ve had plenty of strong offensive nights to lean on. They’ve scored 4+ goals in 28 games times this season and their record in those games is 25-2-1. They’ve scored 5+ goals 20 times this season (record: 20-0-0).

When Columbus scores exactly three goals, they’re only 3-7-3 (with no wins coming in regulation). When they score two or less goals (27 times) they are only 3-19-5.

That’s not breaking news that it becomes easier to win games through scoring more goals. The value is in the context that CBJ has been able to score a lot of goals with more frequency than they scored 2 or fewer goals. That makes all the difference in the world for having a decent season. Their main issues have been on the other side of the ledger in preventing goals but having an offense that can fairly regularly pop off with 4-5 goals on any given game is a great way to get results.

For measurement’s sake, the Penguins have scored 4+ goals just 19 times this season and scored 2 or fewer goals 33 times. That difference to CBJ, in a nutshell, is why one team was playing very meaningful games in March and why the other is looking at just where in top-10 that their draft pick is going to fall.

And now for the Pens

Projected lines (from practice yesterday)

FORWARDS

Rickard Rakell – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust

Connor Dewar – Evgeni Malkin – Philip Tomasino

Danton Heinen – Kevin Hayes – Boko Imama

Joona Koppanen – Blake Lizotte – Noel Acciari

DEFENSEMEN

Kris Letang / Conor Timmins

Matt Grzelcyk / Erik Karlsson

Ryan Graves / Vladislav Kolyachonok

Goalies: Tristan Jarry, Alex Nedeljkovic

Potential Scratches: Ryan Shea (upper body injury), Tommy Novak (lower body), Emil Bemstrom (undisclosed)

Injured Reserve: P.O. Joseph (upper body)

—None of the injured players (aside from Bemstrom) participated in the team portion of practice aside but all are back on the ice working on their own. Novak was deemed “day-to-day” but that is going on two weeks ago and it doesn’t look like he’s imminently close to returning which is a bummer since he ought to be a decent-sized piece of the team in the near future and the Pens were very excited to see what he could bring to the table.

—Bemstrom being able to practice might mean the dull but somewhat interesting storyline that Pittsburgh will have to turn Koppanen’s recall from emergency to regular in order to keep him in the NHL when Bemstrom can play, or return Koppanen to the AHL. As a reminder, NHL teams get four “regular” recalls from the trade deadline to the end of the season with unlimited but temporary emergency recalls. We might see that decision come today, Koppanen’s goal last game gives some reason to believe the Pens might want to see a little more from him.

—Kolyachonok became a persona non grata in the third period of last game spending most of the period on the bench and found himself demoted to the third pair in practice yesterday. Some parts of social media has made an outcry over this but it’s a good rule to not be upset about placement of recently waived defensemen, it’s all shuffling low-end pieces.

—That’s led to the Pens having two right shots on the top pair, which Mike Sullivan addressed with the reasoning that Timmins’ play has usurped handedness at this point. It’ll be interesting to watch how this experiment works out to solve the age old problem of attempting to find enough semi-capable defenders to play tough minutes. Timmins has excelled in the pocket of relatively low TOI, now the competition he’ll see ramps up.

Sullivan, on putting Timmins with Letang: “We think Conor has played extremely well. That was part of the decision-making there… we’d prefer to have guys playing their strong sides, but sometimes there are things that trump that. We thought we would try it in practice today.”

— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) March 20, 2025

—A starting goalie for tonight wasn’t named ahead of time. Jarry lost last game but made 36 games and generally played well. There’s good enough reason to stick with him to see how this one goes, but on the other hand Nedeljkovic hasn’t had game action in exactly two weeks. That marks his longest healthy period of inactivity this season, besides the 4 Nations break. Nedeljkovic has lost his last five decisions, his most recent win was way back on Feb 7 against NYR.