Kings, Blue Jackets face off on fringe of respective wild-card races

The Columbus Blue Jackets will try to take another step towards making the playoffs for the first time since the COVID-shortened 2019-20 season when they host the Los Angeles Kings on Monday afternoon.

The Blue Jackets entered Sunday two points out of the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with 20 games remaining.

Columbus has earned at least a point in five of six games coming out of the Olympic break (3-1-2), most recently losing 5-4 in overtime against the visiting Utah Mammoth on Saturday.

The Blue Jackets scored two goals in the final seven minutes of regulation to extend the game and earn the extra point.

"Since I've been here, I find it a very confident group," said Columbus coach Rick Bowness, who was hired on Jan. 12 to take over for Dean Evason.. "Like, we went into the third (against Utah), and I said, ‘We've been here a lot since I've been here, and we're going to be here a lot more in the next 20 games. That's the reality of this situation.'"

The Kings are also in the playoff hunt, sitting three points out of the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference entering Sunday's action.

Los Angeles hasn't been nearly as sharp as Columbus coming out of the Olympic break. In fact, the Kings fired head coach Jim Hiller on March 1 and replaced him with D.J. Smith.

The Kings have lost two of three with Smith behind the bench, most recently blowing a 3-2 lead with six minutes left against the visiting Montreal Canadiens on Saturday to lose 4-3 in regulation.

The Kings outshot Montreal 16-1 in the first period, but could only build a 1-0 lead before the Canadiens found their legs.

"We've got to learn from this one," Kings forward Alex Laferriere said. "There's been nights where we get outworked and we sneak away with two points, and obviously we'll take that when it happens, but on a night like (Saturday), when we seemingly out-worked them in every area of the ice and felt like we were all over them, to not come away with a win, it hurts pretty bad."

Even though the Kings finished with 39 shots against Montreal, Smith believes they can find even more.

"From the back end, every chance you can to sling it or get it there," he said. "And then the forwards got to do a better job or continue to do a good job of climbing on the goalie."

The Kings play their next five games and eight of their next 10 on the road, where they're 15-8-7 this season, the best record in the Pacific Division.

"Time is running out," Laferriere said. "We've got 20 games left now and we need every single point. When I say we need to learn from this, I mean that we can't change what just happened (against Montreal), so we've got to take the positives from the game and make sure it doesn't happen ever again."

--Field Level Media