Jackets Special Teams Fluster Florida In 4-1 Win
By Steve Sirk,  Columbus Wired (10/19/02)

Entering tonight’s game with Florida, the Blue Jackets haven’t been a very good 5-on-5 hockey team. When teams are even up, the Jackets had surrendered seven goals, while scoring a measly two, only one of which was by a forward.

Maybe that 5-on-5 stuff is overrated.

The Blue Jackets continue to be a team that lives or dies by its special teams. After suffering a brutally horrific death in St. Louis on Thursday, the Jackets’ reanimated special teams were living large with a pair of power play goals and a perfect night of penalty kills in a 4-1 win over the Panthers.

The power play would invigorate the masses with a goal just 3:46 into the contest. Florida attempted a wrap a clearance around the boards behind their net, but the fancy footwork of David Vyborny stopped the puck along the left wall. Vyborny dropped the puck to newly-recalled Derrick Walser who unleashed a rocket from the point that was deflected in by Grant Marshall.

Vyborny wasn’t done yet. Later in the period, he received a Ray Whitney pass and then executed a precision give-and-go with Andy Cassels to double the Jackets lead at 14:52 of the first period. (An even-strength goal no less!)

“David Vyborny had a really solid game,” said coach Dave King. “I like the way he played.” Uh, yeah.

In the second period, the Columbus power play would score that all-important third goal to break the game open. With a 4-on-3 power play, the Jackets game plan was pretty simple. Jaroslav Spacek, Geoff Sanderson and Ray Whitney were there to fire at will. It was a Whitney shot that would prove troubling for Panthers goalie Roberto Luongo. The Jackets captain rifled one on net from the left circle that Luongo deflected into the air. Unfortunately for Florida, the rebound landed on the stick of Cassels, who notched his first goal as a Blue Jacket at the 6:32 mark of period number two.

“With three big shooters out there, I’m just trying to set a screen in front of the net and let them fire away,” said Cassels. “I happened to get a rebound and I buried it. It’s good to get on the board.”

When Cassels got on the board, he also got Spacek on the scoresheet with an assist, extending the blueliner’s consecutive points streak to five games, two short of Espen Knutsen’s club record.

With a 3-0 lead, the game was for all intents and purposes over, provided the penalty kill didn’t let the Panthers back in the game. Florida entered the game third in the league with an astonishing 28.6% conversion rate with the man advantage. Not a comforting stat for a team that allowed four power play goals a few nights ago.

“We were well aware that the Panthers’ game is based a lot on the power play,” said goalie Marc Denis. “We know they’ve got very offensive defensemen like Ozolinsh and Yushkevich. It was a good bounce back by our special teams.”

Killing all six Panther power plays certainly qualifies as a good bounce back from the St. Louis debacle.

“The guys watched the film clips and saw some of the things they were doing wrong,” said King. “Tonight we did a much better job of filling the passing lanes, blocking shots and being more aggressive. And Marc Denis made some key saves for us.”

None more key than a save made just minutes after the Jackets took the 3-0 lead. After a Spacek tripping penalty, the Florida power play was getting revved up. Then Denis shut them down with a spectacular post-to-post save to stuff Niklas Hagman on what looked to be a sure goal.

Denis would eventually surrender a goal later in the period when Denis Shvidki banked a puck in off a tangle of bodies crowding the edge of the Columbus crease, but it was too little too late. The Jackets did a masterful job of suffocating the Panthers in period number three, and got an empty net goal from Sanderson to top it all off.

“I really liked the way we protected the lead,” said Denis. “It was impressive to see the way we controlled the puck in the last five minutes.”

Never mind the last five minutes, the Jackets gave a superb effort for all sixty. Coming off a 7-1 thrashing, the team needed to prove to the fans, and themselves, that lopsided losses will be an aberration and not the norm. In a situation like this, it’s the team leaders that need to set the tone, and it was telling that the “little guy” line of Vyborny, Knutsen and captain Ray Whitney was a force to be reckoned with all night.

“Ray Whitney was a great leader out there tonight,” said Jody Shelley. “He was forechecking, he was backchecking and he made a lot of nice plays. When our leaders step up like that, it helps everyone else chip in.”


Postscript: Jody Shelley’s Night

Blue Jackets enforcer Jody Shelley knew he had to be ready for tonight’s game, what with the NHL’s defending penalty-minutes champion Peter Worrell coming into town. (Worrell’s 354 PiM were 100 more than his next closest competitor!)

Sure enough, Shelley and the Florida heavyweight decided to ‘Ignite the Fight’ three-and-a-half minutes into the second period.

To let Shelley explain the genesis of their battle: “At the faceoff I said, ‘Hey what’s going on?’ He said, ‘We gonna fight?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ And then we went at it once the puck dropped.”

Despite the skirmish’s casual origin, the fight was a good one. Over the course of the lengthy battle, Worrell landed more punches, but Shelley landed an uppercut that would have damn near decapitated a lesser foe.

“We’ve had a few battles and he’s usually had the upper hand,” said Shelley. “He’s one of those guys that you have to know what you’re doing going in. I tried to get in there and throw a few uppercuts. I thought this fight was pretty even. I wasn’t too excited when he got the jersey over the head because the refs jumped in and I thought we could have gone a lot longer.”

Near the end of the game, Shelley’s presence was needed for a far more important matter than a heavyweight prize fight. With 28 seconds to go, Panthers defenseman Lance Ward delivered a vicious elbow to the face of Tyler Wright behind the play, leaving the Jackets center laying face down in his own blood. Ward was given five minutes for elbowing and a game misconduct.

As Wright eventually made his way to his skates and headed toward the Jackets bench, the 17,424 in attendance started chanting Shelley’s name. They wanted vengeance. The crowd erupted when Shelley took the ice for the game’s final shift. But there was no pound of flesh extracted by big #45.

“There wasn’t really pressure (to get in a fight),” said Shelley. “It’s a situation where that play at the end was BUSH. It didn’t need to happen. We got a guy injured. Then I get out there and I’m excited to take on one of their guys, but you’ve got to hold back. I don’t think the league would be happy if I went out there and did something to someone with 20 seconds left. But their guy took out Tyler with 30 seconds left, so it’s one of those things where we’ll see him again and he’ll be thinking about it I’m sure. That’s one of those things that, in my position, I definitely store in my mind. It’s just disrespectful to do what he did.”