After Ryan Johansen was made a healthy scratch last week, Columbus GM Jarmo Kekalainen told the Dispatch that “sometimes a message has to be hard, and it’s obviously a hard message when a player is scratched.”
Well, it sure looks like Johansen got the hard part.
During the first period of tonight’s game in Pittsburgh, Johansen drove Pens d-man Ian Cole through the glass with a pretty healthy bodycheck:
oops pic.twitter.com/kMTMsbS3X9
— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) December 22, 2015
This was Johansen’s second game back since getting parked in the press box -- he played over 20 minutes in Saturday’s 3-2 shootout win over Philly.
All told, the 23-year-old finished tonight’s opening period with just under six minutes of ice time, winning 75 percent of his draws. Columbus went into the intermission leading 1-0 on an Alexander Wennberg goal.