Lightning Strikes Back To Tie Jackets 2-2
By Steve Sirk,  Columbus Wired (10/23/02)

It is a popular assumption in our culture that getting off to a good start is paramount to success. This idea is reflected in our language: The early bird gets the worm. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

But fast starts aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. Consider Wile E. Coyote in his quixotic pursuit of the roadrunner. Tonight at Nationwide Arena, it was the Columbus Blue Jackets that strapped on the ACME Rocket-Propelled Skates, zoomed off to a fast two-goal start…..and then zoomed right on over the cliff. (Long whistling sound)….(poof!) Tampa 2, Columbus 2. The Lightning remain undefeated with another comeback. Beep! Beep!

Columbus dominated the opening minutes of the game. Right from the faceoff, the Jackets pinned the puck deep in the Tampa end. In the first two minutes, the Lightning managed to clear the zone only once, and that was just for the few seconds needed for each team to change lines. Then it was right back to the status quo.

The constant pressure would pay off. Luke Richardson held the puck in along the right side and sent it up the boards to Andrej Nedorost, who fought along the wall to chip the puck down into the corner for Geoff Sanderson. Faster than you can say “Vaclav Prospal lost his jockstrap”, Sanderson zipped in front of the net and deposited the puck through Nikolai Khabibulin’s pads to make it 1-0 at the 2:00 mark.

“It was the second shift, and our line had just watched Whitney, Knutsen and Vyborny have a great shift down low,” said Sanderson. “After watching them forecheck, we jumped out there and did the same thing. If you keep it down there, sooner or later someone is going to make a mistake. Their player didn’t close the gap quick enough and it gave me a lane to get in front for a shot.”

Sanderson made the game 2-0 at 8:22 of the period when he was on the receiving end of some brilliant passing on the Jackets power play. After a faceoff win brought the puck to the left point, Whitney faked a slapshot before zinging a pinpoint pass to Andrew Cassels down low to the right. Cassels one-timed a sharp pass to Sanderson in front, who snapped the puck past Khabibulin.

“Cass made a great pass whipping it through the crease,” said the goalscorer. “Only a few players can make that pass, and he’s one of them. He didn’t even look. I think it was a set play off the faceoff, and everyone knew about it but me.”

Things appeared to be going well in Jackets Land, but there was trouble brewing. One ominous sign was that Columbus had thoroughly outplayed Tampa for nearly ten minutes, but only had three shots to show for it. Granted, two of them went in, but Blue Jackets coach Dave King recognized the need to make Khabibulin work.

“We just missed the net,” said King. “We had many good shooting opportunities that just didn’t require a save. Anytime you get the goalie down and out and you don’t hit the net, that’s a huge problem. You’ve got to make him be good.”

While Khabulin faced only four shots in the opening frame, Marc Denis was getting sporadic, but tough work. See Martin St. Louis knife his way through the Jackets defense for a mini-breakaway…pad save Denis. See Fredrik Modin swipe the puck from Jaroslav Spacek for a shorthanded breakaway….save Denis.

The Jackets wouldn’t come away unscathed. At 18:55, Martin St. Louis would extend his goal-scoring streak to five games by getting on the end of a perfectly-feathered centering pass from Prospal. While skating at full speed straight up the middle with Espen Knutsen draped all over him, the little guy managed to flick a one-time shot into the upper left corner of the net.

Goals at the end of periods will kill you. Turns out goals at the beginning of periods will too.

After an uneventful second period (the Jackets didn’t register their fifth shot of the game until nine minutes had elapsed in period two), the game would turn on a goaltending blunder to lead off period number three.

The Zamboni wasn’t even in park yet when Tampa’s Dave Andreychuk lofted a soft, waffling puck toward the Columbus net. Somehow Denis managed to Bill Buckner the darn thing and the score was leveled just 12 ticks into the final period.

“It wasn’t a very good shot,” said King. “It wasn’t a very hard shot. It just snuck though him. Probably one that Marc would like to get back.”

No kidding.

“It was a bad goal,” said Denis. “I should have had it. It’s my fault. I let my team down, so I’m not a happy camper.”

While Denis was left to rue the soft goal, his teammates’ attempts at picking him up were summarily dismissed by the hot-handed Khabibulin. Having lost some steam in the middle period and the early parts of the third, the Jackets started gaining momentum late. Khabibulin kicked aside two rockets off the stick of Spacek, who saw his 5-game point scoring streak kicked aside in the process. Whitney redirected a Sean Pronger pass, but Khabibulin gobbled it up. With under a minute to go, Rick Nash fought through a double-team to threaten the Tampa net, but the hot goalie kicked that attempt aside as well.

The goaltender’s defining moment would come in overtime, during a 4-on-3 power play for Columbus. In a play that was pretty much identical to the Jackets’ second goal, Spacek had the puck at the left point. He played the puck down low on the right to Whitney, who one-timed a pass into the middle to Sanderson, who one-timed a shot into the “Bulin Wall.”

“I didn’t see where it went,” said Sanderson. “And he (Khabibulin) didn’t see where it went. I thought it might have trickled behind him and that Cassels might have an empty net. But he just kinda squeezed it in his arm. He’s a great goalie.”

With the last power play snuffed out, the game ended 2-2….a cruel result for a Columbus team that had played particularly well against an undefeated squad. The Lightning came in on a roll, but the Jackets neutralized a club scoring approximately five goals per game.

“Our forwards did a very good job in the transition from attacking to defending,” said King. “Our backchecking was as quick as I’ve seen it. We didn’t give them a lot of good entries. They had to shoot the puck in more than I’m sure they’d have liked. We did a good job of winning the shoot-ins and then making good passes on our breakouts.”

But as encouraging as the performance was, it was only one point instead of two.

“We really probably should have won the game, and we know that,” said King. “We had some good chances to make it 3-0 and we didn’t do it. If you get the chance to sink the ship and don’t do it, the other team gets a bit of life back. They got some good goaltending from Khabibulin late. He loomed very large.”

Just goes to show that it ain’t how you start, it’s how you finish.