Star-Gazing Jackets Lose 4-3 To Dallas
By Steve Sirk, Columbus Wired

The much-anticipated Era Of Good Tidings And Reversed Fortunes lasted for all of eight seconds. Just one day after the Columbus Blue Jackets finally – and mercifully- ended their season-opening 14-game road winless drought, it took just eight ticks on the scoreboard clock for the Jackets to unexpectedly fall behind for good in a 4-3 home loss to the stingy Dallas Stars.

The Stars came into Nationwide Arena riding the red-hot Marty Turco. The Dallas goaltender entered the night having held the opposition to one goal or less in seven straight games, making him the first NHL goaltender to accomplish the feat since John Vanbiesbrouck in 1992. Clearly not the type of guy you want to play catch-up against.

Oops.

Mike Modano won the opening faceoff and, before there was so much as a body check thrown, the Stars were up 1-0. After winning the draw, Modano skated to the blue line and received a long diagonal pass from Sergei Zubov. He then innocently smacked a long-range shot toward Columbus goalie Fred Brathwaite’s net. Clink! Off the post and in. It was like the leadoff hitter belting a home run before the first pitch was thrown, if such a puzzlingly illogical occurrence can be imagined. The crowd murmured in stunned confusion.

“He hit an early puck,” said Brathwaite. “It was a knuckler, but it’s a puck that has to be stopped, especially at that point in the game. We were pretty fired up to go out there and have a good start against a team that’s been playing really well, but then a goal like that goes in…it just shouldn’t happen.”

After coughing up the softy, Brathwaite seemed hell-bent on redemption. He brought the fans out of their seats with a miraculous stop on Stu Barnes, who collected a deflection at the left post and only needed to tap it into the empty net. Brathwaite lunged his stick across the goalmouth and improbably denied the surefire goal. Just minutes later, Brathwaite robbed Modano twice on a flurry at the edge of the crease. The crowd roared their approval.

But at 10:17, the Stars would take a 2-0 lead. Modano did some nifty stick work to gain the zone, settling in the right circle. He dropped the puck to Philippe Boucher at the point, whose blast was redirected into net by Brenden Morrow.

The Jackets began to get out of their funk and take the play to Dallas. The effort paid off when Nikolai Zherdev utilized his explosiveness and skill to cut the deficit in half. Collecting the puck in the left circle, Zherdev zoomed in a counter-clockwise arc, with four Stars pursuing in vain, before unleashing a low shot that beat Turco’s glove side. David Vyborny’s screen was vital in hindering Turco’s ability to pick out the puck.

With the crowd reinvigorated by Zherdev’s fireworks, the Jackets seemed poised to make a game of it. That is, until another softy eluded Brathwaite. That one-man offensive juggernaut known as Teppo Numminen scored his first goal of the season on an open wrister from 44-feet that somehow trickled through Brathwaite’s pads at 14:14, just 68 seconds after Zherdev’s goal.

“They made it 2-0 and we battled back to 2-1,” said Brathwaite, “but then that third one…again, that can’t go in. We were starting to work really hard and we were starting to take it to them, and then they get another weak goal like that. It’s frustrating and disappointing.”

An unfortunate law of goaltending is that all goals and saves are not created equal. The momentum boost of a spectacular save is more than negated by a soft goal.

“I guess I made some stops I probably shouldn’t have,” said Brathwaite, “but I’d rather those goals go in than those two weak ones. It’s frustrating to make the nice stops and then let the bad ones in. Those cost us momentum and they shouldn’t have happened.”

Brathwaite left the ice for the last time at the first intermission. Marc Denis replaced him to start the second period, and had to face a 5-on-3 Dallas power play just one minute into the frame. Denis came away unscathed, thanks in large part to a stellar shift by Andrew Cassels, but the Jackets didn’t capitalize on the momentum.

Dallas took a 4-1 lead at 9:10, when the one-man offensive juggernaut known as Richard Matvichuk scored his first goal of the season. Niko Kapanen made a nice spin-o-rama pass as he fell down along the right boards. Rob DiMaio received the pass along the inside of the right circle and squared it to a wide open Matvichuk for the easy tap-in.

Goalie Marty Turco was pleased to see defensemen Matvichuk and Numminen, who combined for seven goals last year, provide some unlikely offensive heroics.

“When you (as a team) are not scoring as often as you like, it's nice to get goals from anybody,” he said. “We really don't care who scores as long as we’re scoring more than the opposition.”

With Turco in net, the three-goal deficit looked insurmountable. At least the Jackets had one thing in their favor- Rick Nash had yet to score his daily goal. Nash didn’t waste time scoring it, beating Turco with a low 22-foot slap shot to the stick side at 13:07. It was Nash’s 23rd goal, which leads the NHL.

“He got drafted there (#1 overall) for a reason,” said Turco. “I haven't been beaten clean like that in a long time.”

With Nash’s obligatory heroics out of the way, the remainder of the game became a muddled affair. The Stars were content to sit back and stifle the Jackets, rarely pushing forward offensively. They played dump-and-chase, minus the chase. This combination of suffocating defense and inert offense limited third period shots to a combined total of four—all belonging to Columbus. The zero shots against set a Blue Jackets record for fewest shots allowed in a period. (I’m no genius, but that’s one record never likely to be broken.)

The Jackets made it interesting when Lasse Pirjeta beat Turco on a bad-angle, low slapper from along the left wall at 13:16 of the third. But Columbus could only muster one more shot in the final 6+ minutes, dooming them to their sixth consecutive non-winning effort at home.

“We came out slow and they jumped all over us,” said Todd Marchant. “In the end, we made of a game of it, but the bottom line is we lost two points. And we lose another game at home, which is an area where we were pretty solid at the beginning of the year.”

“Against a defensive team like Dallas, you’re not going get back many times when you’re down 4-1,” said captain Luke Richardson. “We need to be able to come out and skate like they did in the opening period, especially in our building to get the crowd fired up. We can’t wait until we’re behind against solid organizations like Dallas.”

Coach Doug MacLean wasn’t shy about voicing his disappointment with the goaltending blunders that put his team behind.

“I mean, eight seconds in and a guy scores on a shot from the boards,” he grumbled. “We battled back, and then they score on a brutal goal from the blue line. I’m getting sick and tired of pulling goaltenders. I’m tired of it.”

The most frustrating aspect for MacLean is the inconsistency.

“Last night, Freddy Brathwaite gave us a chance to win the game,” he said. “We didn’t get that tonight. We gave up three scoring chances in the second and third periods. They never had a shot on goal in the third period. Average goaltending isn’t going to get it done for us. We need top goaltending and we’re not getting it right now, except for maybe every third game. That’s not satisfactory.”

However, in the locker room, the players were unanimous in their support of Brathwaite, although the hypothetical scores varied by player.

“If it wasn’t for Freddy in the first ten minutes, it would have been 4-0 for sure,” said Marchant.

“I’m sure Freddy wants them back, but if you look at the saves he made, it could have been 6-0,” said Nash. “We let him down. It wasn’t his fault he was pulled. It was our fault.”

“I know Freddy will tell you he wants two of those goals back,” said Denis, “but at the same time, he could have allowed eight others that wouldn’t have been his fault at all in that first period. We played such a bad period, I don’t think anyone is holding Freddy responsible.”

4-0, 6-0, 8-1…it’s of little solace to Brathwaite.

“Yesterday I was the hero, and tonight I was the goat.”