Twenty Minutes Of Bliss: Jackets Jump Wild, 5-0
By Steve Sirk,  Columbus Wired (3/15/03)

Tonight at Nationwide Arena, the Columbus Blue Jackets finally discovered a sure-fire way to overcome their debilitating habit of allowing the first goal: Light the lamp before the other team ever even carries the puck into the offensive zone. Buoyed by Andrew Cassels’ goal 16 seconds into the game, the Jackets made quick work of the Minnesota Wild, defeating their expansion siblings 5-0 on the strength the five first period goals.

It was the finest 20 minutes in franchise history, and it was sorely needed. First off, the Jackets were coming off Thursday’s listless embarrassment at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche. Also weighing heavily was the fact that Columbus had conceded the first goal in 14 straight games, going 2-10-1-1 in that stretch. Furthermore, they were playing a Wild team whose trapping system, when given a one-goal lead, suffocates opponents with the calm inevitability of a boa constrictor. The Wild are 25-4-1 when scoring first.

Columbus needed a first-goal pick-me-up in the worst way, and Cassels delivered. On the first shift of the game, he received a Geoff Sanderson pass near the top of the right circle and snapped a low wrister from distance that went five-hole on Wild goalie Manny Fernandez. Suddenly, the burden had been lifted.

“Getting that early goal made everyone feel a whole lot better about themselves,” said Cassels.

Barely a minute after the goal, the crowd was treated to the first of many fights on the evening. After Brad Brown went knee-to-knee on Jamie Allsion, Sean Pronger rushed in and duked it out with Brown. Already amped from the goal, the fans had the building shaking after the first skirmish.

“We scored the fastest goal in CBJ history and then we started feeding off the energy from the fans in the building,” said goalie Marc Denis. The goal/fight cycle would soon start repeating itself, keeping the crowd at maximum volume and pushing the Jackets to record-breaking heights.

At 6:05, the Jackets would take a 2-0 lead on an artfully orchestrated power play goal. From the left point, Jaroslav Spacek lasered a pass to Cassels deep in the right circle. Cassels ticked a one-time pass to Sanderson on the side of the goal. Sanderson first-timed a pass out front to Mike Sillinger, whose close-range one-timer easily beat Fernandez. The speed, accuracy and efficiency of the sequence dropped jaws.

Then the Wild dropped gloves. David Ling and Jeremy Stevenson went at it right on the ensuing face-off. If this was meant to sway momentum back in Minnesota’s favor, the tactic failed miserably. The Jackets became more determined than ever to bang bodies and win battles. Seconds after the fight, Sanderson boomed Filip Kuba into the boards. The crowd roared in appreciation.

“I think Sandy set the tone with a big hit on the forecheck to get everyone going,” said Jackets  President/GM/Coach/Usher Doug MacLean. “When you see your top guys finish checks, that’s what it’s all about.”

Intoxicated on adrenaline, the Jackets buzzed about the ice. No sprint was too long, no backcheck too tedious, no battle too bruising. After being called for a holding penalty, Rick Nash went so far as to chuck his stick across the ice in protest. This team had fire in its belly and lava in its veins.

And a rock between the pipes. Marc Denis came up with huge saves on a few occasions in the early going, but none so spectacular as the one he made on Jim Dowd. With Denis hugging the left post, the Wild played a quick pass across the crease to an unmarked Dowd at the far post. Staring at an empty net, Dowd was poised to score the goal that would get the Wild back in the game. Instead, Denis lunged across the open goal, stabbing at the gaping target with his stick. Wood met rubber.

“It’s just one of those where I didn’t have a clue he was back there, and all I had available to put in the way was my stick,” said Denis. “You get lucky once in a while. I did there.”

The Jackets’ luck was far from running out. At 13:01, David Ling scored for the second straight game. The feisty winger chased a puck deep into the left corner, looped back up along the boards and peeled out at the left circle, where he slid a low shot through Fernandez from a poor angle.

On the ensuing face-off, the Wild again bared knuckles the moment play resumed. This time Jody Shelley and Matt Johnson duked it out to the crowd’s delight.

Playing as well as they were, the Jackets needed to get the kill before the horn sounded. They nearly got it when Rostislav Klesla clanged a shot off of Fernandez’s face with three minutes to go. Instead, it was Andrew Cassels who severed the jugular at 18:41 when he picked Marian Gaborik’s pocket inside the Wild blue line, skated in alone against Fernandez, then beat him high to the stick side.

“It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to think about it,” said Cassels. “He went down early so I kinda shoveled it into the top corner.”

As the team’s media relations department was informing the media that the four first period goals tied a franchise record, Ray Whitney stopped them mid-sentence by re-writing the thing. With 30 seconds to go, Whitney blasted a slapshot from the right circle that hit Fernandez’s blocker, popped into the air, and then dropped gently into the net.

The pandemonium was unreal.

There were still forty minutes to play, and the Jackets handled them with aplomb. Minnesota was defeated, but the Jackets wouldn’t even let them sniff respectability. The Wild pulled Fernandez in favor of Dwayne Roloson in an effort to stop the bleeding, but the Minnesota offense mustered just 11 shots over the final two periods as Denis earned a deserved shutout, his fourth on the season.

“The best part is that 5-on-5, I don’t think they had any dangerous scoring opportunities those last two periods,” said Denis. “We played very calm and collected once we got the lead.”

“From the goaltender, to the six D, to the four lines, it was a solid 60 minutes by everyone,” said Cassels.

It is true that those sixty minutes were solid, but the legend that will grow out of this game will focus on the 20 minutes that were so much more than that. They were 20 minutes of art. They were 20 minutes of electricity. They were 20 minutes of bliss.

 

** For more on the game, see Greg Dew's "A Tale of Two Hockey Cities"