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Blue Jackets ready for either Maple Leafs or Bruins

The Columbus Blue Jackets will get their second-round opponent when the Toronto Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins finish off their best-of-seven series tonight in Boston.
Credit: Paul Vernon
Columbus Blue Jackets forward Matt Duchene is seen against the Pittsburgh Penguins during an NHL game at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday, March 9, 2019.

The Columbus Blue Jackets punched their ticket to the second round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs with a four-game sweep of the NHL’s best regular-season team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, last Tuesday night, but they have yet to find out the next opponent.

However, the Blue Jackets will get clarity on the situation in the Eastern Conference Semifinals when the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs play a deciding Game 7 in their first round series at TD Garden in Boston tonight.

“We have our work done on the two teams,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said.

“We’ve played them enough. We know them enough. Just want to get a date, but there’s no complaints here. There’s no sense of worrying about that stuff. We’re just going to keep on practicing and try to go about our business the right way here.”

Since closing out the Lightning in the first-ever sweep of the Presidents’ Trophy winner in the first round of the playoffs, the Blue Jackets have taken time to heal up from the series, got back on the practice ice multiple times and held a team scrimmage at Nationwide Arena that that 5,200 people attended Monday morning.

“We’ve got to be very careful,” Tortorella said. “I don’t want to minimize a team winning a round for the first time. I know that that’s around us. I understand that. That’s great that we’re able to feel we made a step in the right direction, but do you want more?

“That’s the mindset we have to have. Do you want more and are you willing to put the work in to get more because, quite honestly, I think it just starts now. The first round’s the first round.

“I’m not trying to overstate it. I left the game alone for one day, and I thought about it and got nervous right away thinking about it, as far as our challenge here. We want to keep going. I can’t put it any other way.”

Some would consider the extended rest a good thing for the Blue Jackets, but the men in the dressing room are focused on being the best version of themselves when the second round starts later this week, not if their opponent had to play more games to advance.

Center Matt Duchene believes the kind of consistent play and diversity in scoring that anchored the Blue Jackets during their sweep of the Lightning have brought the team closer together and expects that to be the case in the second round, too.

“We committed to our game plan and we didn’t have one passenger in here,” Duchene said. “There wasn’t one guy who didn’t play his best hockey in that series. There was a different hero every night or a different set of heroes each game. Guys came up in big moments, and that’s what it takes.

“You’re not going to have one or two or three guys carry you through a whole playoff run and expect to win. It just doesn’t work that way. You need everyone going. It’s such a team-oriented time of year, and that’s what we had in the first round. That was really fun to watch. It was fun to watch different guys step up and it brings everyone together.”

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