After CBJ wins, we’ll give three takeaways about what stood out or what we’ll remember from the Blue Jackets victory.

1. The Blue Jackets finally got a win in Pittsburgh.

It was nearly a decade ago on Nov. 13, 2015, when the Blue Jackets last won before tonight in the Steel City. You can almost hear a radio announcer painting a picture of what life was like then as he begins a flashback montage…

“Hello” by Adele was the No. 1 song on the charts. Gas cost $2.23 a gallon, and Peyton Manning was on his way to winning his second Super Bowl…

It had been that long since the Blue Jackets left Pittsburgh as a happy bunch, a 15-game losing streak against the division rival that seemed to defy all logic.

There is no magic formula to beat that kind of hex, but the Blue Jackets finally found the right balance between acknowledging it and not really caring.

After all, this is a gameday roster that had 10 new players – plus a new head coach in Dean Evason – since last year’s March 28 loss in Pittsburgh, so it’s not like most in the dressing room were preoccupied with the past or had even lived that much of it.

Add in a relatively young bunch of players – it’s not like Dmitri Voronkov or Adam Fantilli have had too many difficult drives through the Fort Pitt Tunnel in their careers – and it wasn’t really something that hung over this squad that much going in.

“I don’t care,” Kirill Marchenko said afterward. “We just wanted to win, that’s it.”

“I think there were a couple of jokes about it when we flew into Pittsburgh, but I think guys were pretty confident, thinking, ‘This is the year we can do it,’” Kent Johnson said. “Obviously we’ve been a better team (this year), so it definitely felt good to do it.”

Evason was more on the side of not giving two flips, as whatever happened before he got to Columbus has been largely immaterial to him this season. He said assistant coach Jared Boll may have mentioned the streak in the coaches’ room before the game, but Evason’s laser focus was on having the team ready to play, and the Blue Jackets succeeded in that regard.

“Listen, this is a different team than in the past 10 years or whatever it’s been, (or) last year,” Evason said. “We’re a different hockey club. We’re playing the way that the Columbus Blue Jackets play today in order to win. So what’s happened in the past, it means nothing. It really does. This group, if we play hard like that every night, we’ll give ourselves a chance to win regardless of if we haven’t won somewhere.”

2. Adam Fantilli stepped up in a big way after the loss of Sean Monahan.

The first-year Blue Jackets center has been one of the biggest pieces of the team’s resurgence this year, providing excellent play on the top line and bringing leadership to the locker room.

So when Monahan left the game in the third period – he suffered an upper-body injury in the second but tried to go in the final frame, leaving after one shift – it could have been a major blow to the Blue Jackets.

Enter Fantilli, who moved up between Marchenko and Voronkov and brought energy – as well as contributed to two goals – to help the Blue Jackets erase a 3-1 deficit in the final eight minutes. First, his centering pass deflected off of Marchenko and went right to Voronkov at the right post, and the big Russian made no mistake in putting it past Tristan Jarry to make it a one-goal game with 7:55 left.

Fantilli then scored the tying goal with 2:36 remaining and the Blue Jackets on the power play. Taking Monahan’s spot in the bumper position on the man advantage, Fantilli one-touched a sweet pass from Johnson past Jarry from the slot to even the game.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are the biggest underdog in the NFL wild-card round for the second year in a row. Yikes.

The Steelers will their face AFC North rivals the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday night, and right now, Pittsburgh sits as a 10-point underdog. This is unfortunately familiar territory for Pittsburgh since last year the Steelers were a 10-point underdog to the Buffalo Bills. The Bills ended up winning that game 31–17.

Pittsburgh is heading into the wild-card game on a four-game losing streak—definitely not the results the team was hoping to end their up-and-down season on. They didn’t score over 17 points in that four-game streak, and they haven’t been favored in a game since their last win, which came over the Cleveland Browns on Dec. 8.

On the flip side, the Ravens are coming into the playoffs on a four-game winning streak. Baltimore even beat Pittsburgh 34–17 in that span. The Steelers previously beat the Ravens 18–16 on Nov. 17.

Saturday’s game marks the fifth time the AFC North rivals have faced each other in the playoffs with the Steelers having won three of the previous postseason matchus. However, Baltimore won the most recent game in 2014.

The odds are definitely not in the Steelers’ favor, but they could surprise NFL fans this weekend. If Pittsburgh does eke out a win, it will be the team’s first playoff win since the 2016 season.