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NEW YORK, NY -- Most NHL teams struggled immediately after their respective bye weeks this season, but not the Columbus Blue Jackets, who returned to action with a home-ice win Saturday and followed that up with an impressive 5-2 road victory over the New York Rangers Sunday at Madison Square Garden. The win pushed Columbus past New York into the third place in the Metropolitan Division with 83 points. The Rangers now hold the first wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
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"The boys responded really well coming out of the break," said Blue Jackets alternate captain Brandon Dubinsky. "We actually played two rock-solid games from start to finish. Everyone from the goalies on out played well and was a big part of this."
Cam Atkinson and Alexander Wennberg both scored a pair of goals for the Blue Jackets (39-16-5), and goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky sparkled with 28 saves while earning his 32nd victory of the season, tying his career high set in 2013-14.
Bobrovsky got the best of New York's Henrik Lundqvist, who surrendered five goals Sunday after allowing only four total in his previous three starts.
Rick Nash and Jesper Fast scored for the Rangers (40-20-2), who are 9-2-1 in their last 12 games.
"It's important to make your building difficult to play in, but tonight I just think the better team won," said Rangers center Derek Stepan.
After scoring seven times in a 7-0 rout over the New York Islanders on Saturday, it took the Blue Jackets only 62 seconds to open the scoring Sunday against the Rangers. Wennberg deflected a David Savard slap shot past Lundqvist to give Columbus the quick 1-0 lead.
Nash, the former Blue Jackets captain, answered back at 4:07 with his 18th goal, tying the score, 1-1, two minutes after he was stoned on a clean breakaway by Bobrovsky.
"They played five games in eight nights, and I'm not sure how much they had left in the tank," Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said of the Rangers. "Maybe if they score more early it's tougher on us; but (Bobrovsky) makes a couple big saves there early in the game off Nash, bang bang, and that's a difference."
Columbus regained the lead at 6:47 of the first when Atkinson scored his first of the game, a power play tally, making it 2-1.
"It seemed when they had chances, it ended up in the back of our net," said New York's Dan Girardi.
That lead could have been greater before the first intermission, but Brandon Saad was denied on a penalty shot by Lundqvist with 52.2 seconds to play in the period. New York followed with its own near miss at 2:40 of the second when Oscar Lindberg's shot rang off the cross bar behind Bobrovsky.
The Blue Jackets extended their lead to 3-1 at 9:47 of the middle period when Wennberg scored his second of the game, and 12th of the season, off a scramble in front of the Rangers net.
"It's a fun building to play in, and growing up I watched a lot of Rangers, so for me it's a lot of fun to play well here," said Wennberg following his 14th multiple-point game of the season.
Atkinson scored his career-high 29th goal at 4:12 of the third period, boosting Columbus' advantage to three. From there the Blue Jackets shut the Rangers down until a flurry in the final minute of play saw Josh Anderson of Columbus swap goals with Fast of New York.
"I thought that break for us was crucial because you could tell we were kind of fatigued," said Atkinson. "To get away and reset was huge for us. Two huge wins against division rivals (out of the break), especially with how the standings are right now, those points were crucial."
NOTES:
-- The Blue Jackets won the season series with the Rangers 3-2-0, winning both games played at Madison Square Garden.
-- Columbus scratched LW Matt Calvert (oblique), D Dalton Prout and D Scott Harrington.
-- The Rangers scratched D Kevin Klein (back) for the third straight game, along with RW Pavel Buchnevich and LW Matt Puempel.
