COLUMBUS Chicago Blackhawks Hats Womens , 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,” 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 Adidas Patrik Berglund Jersey , 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, 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 Adidas Vladimir Sobotka Jersey , 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, becoming the 18th coach in league history and the fifth active coach to reach that milestone. TAMPA, Fla. (AP) Nikita Kucherov reached a personal milestone and helped the Tampa Bay Lightning move closer to clinching the top spot in the Eastern Conference.Kucherov became the second player in the NHL to reach 100 points this season, and the Lightning took a two-point lead in the Atlantic Division by beating the Buffalo Sabres 7-5 Friday night.Kucherov scored in the first period and got his 100th point assisting on Dan Girardi’s goal 1:04 into the second that gave Tampa Bay a 4-2 lead.”It’s something special Adidas Scott Wedgewood Jersey ,” Kucherov said. ”I’ll definitely remember it the rest of my life.”Edmonton’s Connor McDavid tops the league with 106 points. According to the NHL, this is the first season since 2009-10 with multiple 100-point players.The Lightning got two goals from Anthony Cirelli, while Yanni Gourde, Brayden Point and Victor Hedman also scored. Alex Killorn had three assists and Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 27 shots.Tampa Bay can wrap up the division title and the best record in the East with a win in its season finale Saturday night at Carolina, or a loss by second-place Boston in either of its final two games.”Is there anything else that needs to be said?” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. ”Win a hockey game, win the division.”The Lightning played their second consecutive game without center Steven Stamkos (lower-body injury), who is expected to be back for the playoffs.Casey Mittelstadt and Alexander Nylander each got his first NHL goal for the last-place Sabres. The Elias Sports Bureau says it was first time two Buffalo players got their first goals in the same game since May 3, 1995, when Curtis Brown and Wayne Primeau accomplished the feat.Jason Pominville, Jordan Nolan and Kyle Okposo also scored for Buffalo Adidas Carter Hutton Jersey , and Chad Johnson had 27 saves.”We made too many mistakes,” Mittelstadt said.After Girardi scored, Buffalo got goals from Pominville, Nolan and Okposo, during a power play, to go ahead 5-4 after the second period.The Lightning rallied on third-period goals 47 seconds apart by Cirelli (6:15) and Point (7:02) in taking a 6-5 advantage. Hedman added an empty-netter.”We didn’t play well in the second and came back in the third, and played the right way,” Kucherov said.Sabres center Jack Eichel called the blown lead ”frustrating.””I thought, maybe, we got a little passive Adidas Conor Sheary Jersey ,” Eichel said.The teams combined for five goals in the opening 9:40 of the game. Gourde, who put Tampa Bay up 3-2, set team records for goals (25) and points (64) by a rookie.Cirelli and Kucherov also had first-period goals for the Lightning, while Mittelstadt, on the power play, and Nylander scored the Buffalo goals.NOTES: Gourde’s goal was his first in 14 games. … This was the 22nd time in 81 games that Buffalo (16-1-5) led after two periods.UP NEXTSabres: Close out the regular season Saturday night at Florida.Lightning: Will look to extend their franchise-record breaking road win total to 26 against the Hurricanes.