COLUMBUS Dmitry Kulikov Jersey , Ohio — Two teams with identical records get together at Nationwide Arena on Thursday night when the Columbus Blue Jackets play host to the Minnesota Wild.The Blue Jackets (14-8-2, 30 points) are trending upward. They’ve gone 7-2-1 in their last two games and return home after a wild 7-5 victory over the Detroit Red Wings on Monday night.More Wild coveragePhotos of the Week: 12/30/18 – 1/5/19Wild Breakaway: Wild start slow, finish fast in beating OttawaSpurgeon scores twice, Wild beat Senators 4-3WATCH: Wild’s Spurgeon scores pair of goals vs. OttawaSt. Cloud State’s Ryan Poehling shines at World Junior ChampionshipThe Wild (14-8-2, 30 points) have won six of the past 10 games. But in Minnesota’s most recent outing, it blew a 3-1 lead and lost 4-3 at home to the Arizona Coyotes on Tuesday night.The Wild players were clearly frustrated with their effort after giving up three consecutive goals when they appeared to be in good position to win.“We keep playing down to the level of competition that comes into this building,” Wild winger Marcus Foligno told reporters. “It’s getting to be embarrassing to set yourself up really good for the third. (The opponents) have no momentum, and yet we just seem like it’s a job and let teams come back in. That’s on us.“That’s a mental thing here. It’s not that we’re a bad hockey team. We’re a good hockey team. We’ve got to play great, though.”The Wild were 6-1-1 when leading after two periods before the collapse. Goaltender Devan Dubnyk couldn’t explain what happened.“I don’t know Youth Dustin Byfuglien Jersey ,” he repeated several times.Losing leads has become a trend. The same thing happened six days earlier when the Wild gave up a three-goal lead in a 6-4 loss to the Ottawa Senators at home.“We’ll have to get back to practice and try to figure out a way to be better in the third periods. Hopefully, we can bring it next game,” Wild forward Eric Fehr said after the latest loss. “We’ll have to look at the tape a little bit and see what we did and what they did to get their scoring chances. That’s a game we have to have at home, no doubt.”That loss left the Wild in third place in the Central Division. Colorado has surged past Minnesota into second place behind Nashville in the division with five straight victories.The Blue Jackets also let a lead slip away their last time out, but they were able to hold off the Red Wings and bounce back from a road loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins two nights earlier.Columbus led Detroit 3-0 after one period and 5-1 in the second period before almost frittering away what could have been a relatively stress-free win on the road.“We got up 5-1 and we think it’s point night now,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said. “It’s funny what happens. They forgot how to check, not forgot how to check, they thought it was going to be an easy night and there’s no easy nights.”Blue Jackets center Pierre-Luc Dubois scored early in the third period after the Red Wings had closed within one goal to make it 6-4 and defenseman Seth Jones added an empty-netter to seal the win.Blue Jackets winger Artemi Panarin ended a 12-game streak without a goal, but linemate Cam Atkinson’s franchise record-tying run of seven games with a goal ended.Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky http://www.officialhockeyjetsshop.com/authentic-adidas-jacob-trouba-jersey , who is 7-3-0 in his last 10 games after getting off to a slow start this season, managed to pick up the victory in Detroit with 27 saves despite giving up five goals. He stopped all nine Detroit shots in the opening period.“This is a league that, if your goaltender is really good, you have a really good team and they play with confidence,” Tortorella said, according to The Columbus Dispatch. “The coach is dynamite, when the goalie’s on. If the goalie’s struggling, the team is two inches tall and the coach (stinks). That’s just the way this business is.”Tortorella will coach his 1,200th NHL game on Thursday Austin Czarnik Jersey Womens , becoming the 18th coach in league history and the fifth active coach to reach that milestone. The Chicago Blackhawks have dug themselves a deep hole when it comes to playoff positioning, but they hope there is still time to make a move.The way the Blackhawks have played of late sure hasn’t hurt.The Blackhawks will enter Tuesday’s Winter Classic against the Boston Bruins having won five of their last six games. Chicago — whose struggles cost coach Joel Quenneville his job earlier this year — will start the new year against the Bruins at Notre Dame Stadium looking to continue its recent surge.Patrick Kane’s overtime winner on Saturday lifted Chicago to its latest victory in a 3-2 win over the Colorado Avalanche.Article continues below ...Now, the Blackhawks hope to use Tuesday’s game as a springboard to what they hope is a productive second half of the season.“We’ve done a good job of staying in the moment the last few weeks,” Blackhawks coach Jeremy Colliton told reporters on Monday. “Obviously, we went through a really tough stretch results-wise, but one thing I’ve been really impressed with our group is that they didn’t quit. They just kept playing. The attitude was great throughout as good as you could expect but even within the games.“We’d fall behind 2-0, 3-0, 4-0, which no one wants to be in that situation Josh Morrissey Jersey , but most nights, we battled back and the commitment and work ethic and energy and positivity has been really great. That says a lot about the group and that’s part of why we’ve been able not only to play better lately but get some more results and that gives us some positive energy coming into this event and it’s a lot easier to enjoy something like this when we come in with some wins.”Cam Ward will start in goal for Chicago as the Blackhawks continue to play without injured starter Corey Crawford.The Bruins, meanwhile, enter Tuesday’s game having won six of their past 10 games and are coming off a 3-2 victory over the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday.Boston’s Brad Marchand will likely be a game-day decision as to whether he plays against the Blackhawks after he missed Saturday’s game with an upper-body injury. But Marchand was a full participant in Monday’s practice in South Bend, Ind., and said he hopes he can play on Tuesday.Asked how important it was that he play in the annual outdoor game, Marchand turned to sarcasm.“It’s so important that I faked that I was hurt last game,” Marchand joked with reporters on Monday, according to the Boston Herald. “Pretty important.”Although it’s just another game on the schedule http://www.officialhockeyjetsshop.com/authentic-adidas-kyle-connor-jersey , Marchand said players don’t treat the Winter Classic that way.“It’s an event,” Marchand said, according to the Herald. “At the end of the day, it’s just another game in the regular season, but I think it’s the event, the experience of the whole thing. . . . It’s the whole experience that you miss out on. At the end of the day, it is just two points, but it’s a lot more than that for family and friends.”