Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella and Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan spoke a few days after a 7-1 win by Columbus on Dec. 22. The conversation between two of the NHL’s most passionate coaches went about like you would expect.

“We’re two competitive (expletives),” Tortorella said, “and I’ll leave it at that.”

Tortorella and Sullivan are close friends, after Sullivan spent seven seasons as Tortorella’s assistant in Tampa Bay (two), New York (four) and Vancouver (one). But that relationship will be tested if this budding rivalry between the Blue Jackets and the Penguins ever blooms.

Here’s the backstory on the conversation:

On Dec. 21, 2015, Sullivan rolled out the Penguins’ No. 1 power play unit with a 5-2 lead and only 58 seconds remaining in the game. Pittsburgh didn’t score, but the attempt to run up the score by Sullivan sparked an ember in Tortorella that burned all summer.

On Dec. 22 of this season — one year and one day later — Tortorella rolled out the league’s No. 1 ranked power play early in the third period with the Blue Jackets up 6-1 in Nationwide Arena.

Touché.

It was the Blue Jackets’ second unit that scored three seconds after the power play expired, leaving Sullivan to shake his head and grin, as if to say, “You got me.”

As for the conversation …

“(The power plays) came up,” Tortorella said, smiling. “But he was the (jerk) first, let’s get that straight. He went first, and I told him that. I said, ‘You were (a jerk).’ He told me I was (a jerk). We were like two little kids, but we both agreed that we are both (jerks).”

The two clubs meet tonight in Pittsburgh for the second of four regular-season games.

If the season ended today, they would meet in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the second time in four seasons. The Penguins won a spirited six-game series in 2014.

“Columbus is a divisional rival, they’re one of the top teams in the league this year,” Sullivan told the Pittsburgh media on Thursday. “They’re a team that we will battle with for the rest of the season down the stretch.”

Before the meeting on Dec. 22, Tortorella dismissed the game as just another on the schedule.

“Game 31,” he said repeatedly.

But he acknowledged on Thursday that tonight’s game is not just Game 50.

“I don’t want to put too much emphasis on it, but, sure, I think it’s more important,” Tortorella said. “It’s Pittsburgh. The two games coming out of the (All-Star) break are good for us as far as emotion. New York (on Tuesday) is in our division, and it’s the Rangers. Now Pittsburgh is in our division, and it’s the Penguins.”

The Blue Jackets scored seven unanswered goals in the previous meeting, the most goals they have ever scored against the Penguins. The six-goal margin was the most lopsided win by either franchise in the all-time series.

Blue Jackets right wing Cam Atkinson said the Penguins will be looking for payback.

“If I was the coach, I’d try to put into their ears that we embarrassed them, or whatever,” Atkinson said. “But it was a long time ago.”

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