Mason, Jackets Stop Red Wings

February 14, 2009 by J. Justin Boggs

Friday the 13th brought a pair of goals each scored by a pair of Jasons in a wild 3-2 win for the Columbus Blue Jackets over the Detroit Red Wings in front of one of the largest crowds ever to witness a game in Nationwide Arena.
 
The Blue Jackets have won three in a row, and are 18-9-1 at home. The loss snapped a six game winning streak for the red-hot Red Wings.
 
Friday also marked the return of Columbus goaltender Steve Mason who was on the shelf for 10 days due to mono. He was cleared Friday afternoon and produced a sterling effort stopping 32 of 34 Red Wings’ shots.
 
“It felt great, there was not a point in the game where I was tired,” Mason said of his return. “He was good tonight,” Blue Jackets head coach Ken Hitchcock said. “He is solid and we have been lucky. The last little while, we have had really good goaltending.”
 
The Blue Jackets are still in the playoff hunt being in a three-way tie for seventh in the Western Conference. At 59 points, Columbus is just two points behind fifth place Anaheim, however only four points separate them from 13th place Phoenix.
 
The Blue Jackets got the game winning goal at 13:05 of the third when former Red Wings forward Jason Williams found the five hole of Detroit goalie Chris Osgood to bury the puck. Williams now has scored in three games in a row.
 
“Shooting on him and playing with him the last few years, you kind of know and find goalies’ tendencies and what they like to do and just one of those things you hope they go in,” Williams said.
 
Columbus’ other Jason, Jason Chimera scored to give Columbus a 2-1 lead 7:21 into the second when Jakub Voracek got Osgood down and Chimera deposited the rebound past Osgood.
 
The Blue Jackets opened scoring when Michael Peca stole the puck from veteran Detroit defenseman Chris Chelios in the neutral zone. Peca and forward Raffi Torres passed back and forth before Torres fired past the glove of Osgood 2:45 into the game.
 
Detroit had an answer for the Blue Jackets’ first two goals. After controlling the flow of play from late in the first period, the Red Wings carried that momentum into the second period when Nicklas Lidstrom fired a slap shot from the blue line that beat Mason 3:25 into the period.
 
Detroit retied the game early in the third when Jiri Hudler stole an attempted Blue Jackets’ clear and passed off to Mikael Samuelsson who beat the glove of Mason.
 
“As a player, it is really rewarding to see the people in Columbus coming out to support our team,” Williams said of the season-high crowd. “For us to get a victory, they’re leaving the building happy, and so are we. They’re almost a six person for us and really loud when we score.”
 
The Columbus defense did a nice job protecting Mason in the game with 18 blocked shots compared to seven for Detroit’s defense.
 
“I don’t think (the way we played) is something new for us,” Blue Jackets defenseman Mike Commodore said. “We proved to ourselves that we can beat the best teams in the league. We beat San Jose a couple times, we beat Detroit… but we know that and our challenge is to play better against those teams that are not Detroit or San Jose.”
 
Despite the win against one of the best in the league, Hitchcock thought his could improve their play in handling the puck.
 
“We’re going to have to play better than we did tonight,” Hitchcock said. “On the puck management side of things tonight, we got ourselves in trouble trying to do too much with the puck instead of advancing it.
 
"When we advanced the puck tonight, when we kept it in front of us and really challenged their defensemen, I thought we did a great job. When we tried to played east and west, those were the problems we got into.”
 
The Blue Jackets travel Saturday to Raleigh, NC to play the Carolina Hurricanes. Columbus is 8-3-1 against teams from the Eastern Conference this season.