Since the end of the Four Nations break, the Columbus Blue Jackets had won four games in a row, including the highly emotional victory over the Detroit Red Wings in the Stadium Series contest played Saturday at Ohio Stadium.

On Tuesday, they were in Florida to play the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning are in third place in the Eastern Conference’s Atlantic Division, while Columbus is in fourth place in the Metro, the top team of two in the Eastern’s wild card spots. In Tuesday’s game, the Blue Jackets fell behind early and lost to the Lightning 6-2.

Tampa Bay quickly put Columbus behind the eight ball, scoring two goals within the first 1:37 of play. The Blue Jackets responded in the first period when Zach Werenski stole a puck in the Blue Jackets’ zone and took it himself all the way down the ice, wristing a shot past goalie Jonas Johansson from the left circle for an unassisted goal.

In the second period, the Lightning again scored two goals in the first part of the period. Werenski again responded, scoring his second goal  of the game with 8:11 left in the period. On a Tampa power play, Kent Johnson poked a blue-line pass down the ice, finding Adam Fantilli who made a perfect pass to Werenski in the slot. It was Werenski’s 20th tally of the season, the second short-handed goal of his career.

Tampa added two goals in the third period, the first from Victor Hedman on a power play, then an empty-netter from Jake Guentzel. Both Hedman and Guentzel had two goals on the night.

“We played hard, but I think just the positions we put ourselves in going down 2-1 and 4-2, you know, putting them on the power play and some shifts in the second period we’d like to have back,” observed Werenski after the game, “but we’ll learn from it. We’ll move forward. We’re in a spot right now where we can’t dwell on things for too long.”

When head coach Dean Evason was asked about the impact of coming off such an emotional game Saturday, he said, “[Tamps]’s a real good team and they had a lot of energy, you know. Maybe we did have a bit of a hangover, but we can’t make an excuse, right? We should have been better. We should have started better. We didn’t. ” He added that they would get a good burn at practice Wednesday and be ready to play at Florida Thursday.

The Blue Jackets’ game against the Florida Panthers Thursday at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise gets underway at 7:00 p.m.