Penguins earn comeback win over Blue Jackets in Game 1

With a hard-fought 4-3 victory on Wednesday night, the Pittsburgh Penguins took Game 1 of their first round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Columbus opened the scoring when Brandon Dubinsky picked off a Beau Bennett pass and went coast to coast, eventually setting up Jack Johnson with a perfect spinning backhand feed. The lead marked the first time the Blue Jackets had ever held the lead in a postseason game in franchise history.

But the lead wouldn't last, something of a theme of Game 1 actually, as Penguins forward Jussi Jokinen answered just over 10 minutes later. Jokinen converted a slick feed from Penguins center Evgeni Malkin on the goal:

[Courtesy NHL.com]

From there it was all about special teams. The Blue Jackets retook the lead before the first period was over, thanks to a power-play goal by Mark Letetsu that was set up expertly by defenseman Jack Johnson. Derek MacKenzie would add a short-handed goal in the first minute of the third period, capitalizing off of a brutal Kris Letang giveaway in the neutral zone to give the Blue Jackets a two goal lead.

Columbus would need all of that cushion, as the Penguins tied the game with two quick power-play goals from Bennett and Matt Niskanen in the second frame. 

The Blue Jackets, generally, out played the Penguins through 40 minutes - winning the shots-on-goal battle and controlling proceedings with their usual, hard-nosed, grinding physical style. Center Brandon Dubinsky drew the primary matchup against the Sidney Crosby, Chris Kunitz line and didn't miss a single opportunity to annoy or rough up the Penguins' star.

Though Dubinsky was a thorn in the side of the Penguins' superstar, his line (his most frequent wingers were Cam Atkinson and Matt Calvert) was flattened from a territorial perspective by Crosby's group. With Crosby and Kunitz on the ice the Penguins routinely pinned the Blue Jackets in their own end, though the Jackets did well to keep them to the outside and actually won this matchup on the scoreboard.

In the third period, the Penguins completely took over, stepping on the visiting team's throat and dominating proceedings. Partly as a result of the sustained pressure, Penguins checker Brandon Sutter - who along with line-mates Tanner Glass and Lee Stempniak were used to soak up defensive zone starts all night long - put a wrist shot through Blue Jackets goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky to give the home side a 4-3 lead. 

The Penguins didn't let up with the one-goal lead, as they continued to control the flow of play after Sutter's goal, and tested Bobrovsky with shot after shot until very late in the game.  The Blue Jackets rarely threatened to tie the game, and barely mustered a scoring chance in the games latter stages.

Though they were stomped rather thoroughly in the third frame, and coughed up a two-goal lead, the performance of rookie defenseman Ryan Murray was a bright spot for the Blue Jackets. Murray logged over 23 minutes, many of them against Pittsburgh's best players, and the Blue Jackets outscored the Penguins with the 20-year-old defenseman on the ice.

The puck drops for Game 2 at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh on Saturday at 7pm (EST).