Detroit tops Columbus 5-4 in OT shootout
By Dave Seaman, Columbus Wired

A stellar hockey game between the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets came down to the shootout Sunday night. In the end, the Red Wings left Nationwide Arena with two points in a 5-4 shootout win in front of 15,503.

Johan Franzen scored in the fifth round of the shootout and David Vyborny was stuffed by Chris Osgood to give Detroit the win.

“We pretty much did everything we needed to do win the hockey game,” Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock said. “We made the adjustments necessary from game one (Nov. 9) in their building. They are the best team in the West, possibly the best team in the NHL. We should have a lot of confidence from this.”

Nikolai Zherdev had a goal and two assists to lead Columbus, while Rick Nash added a goal and two assists. Duvie Westcott and Sergei Fedorov added goals for the Jackets, while Ron Hainsey two assists.

Nicklas Lidstrom led the Wings with a goal and two assists. Tomas Holmstrom, Brett Labda and Pavel Datsyuk also scored for Detroit.

In the shootout, Datsyuk and Jiri Hudler scored for the Red Wings, while Zherdev and Nash scored for the Blue Jackets. The two goals were the first two scored in the shootout for Columbus, who drops to 0-4 in shootouts.

“Usually you are going to get a win when you score two in the shootout,” Nash said.

Both teams took advantage of the power play with the Jackets scoring trice and the Red Wings scoring twice.

Westcott hit a slap shot that went over the glove of Osgood to give the Jackets a 1-0 lead at 10:29 of the first on the power play. Hainsey made two plays to keep the puck into the Red Wings zone and assisted on the goal.

The Red Wings nullified the deficit with two power play goals in a span of 16 seconds. Lidstrom scored on a slap shot that slid between Pascal Leclaire’s glove and the post. Holmstrom then scored off a feed from Lidstrom.

Fedorov tied the game at two 41 seconds into the second period with a little give-and-go as the Jackets were on a two-man advantage.

Lebda got the goal back for Detroit 62 seconds later with a wrist shot from the right face-off circle.

After the goal, Hitchcock pulled Leclaire for several minutes to calm him down.

“(Hitchcock) told me to calm down,” Leclaire said. “Maybe I was a little back in my net. Sometimes it happens and you don’t realize it. They created a lot of traffic so maybe that was the tendency. He reminded me to be aggressive.”

Nash scored essentially an empty net goal when Osgood misplayed the puck at 14:26 to tie the game at three on the power play. Osgood played the puck behind his own goal, but Zherdev found an open Nash, who scored his 14th of the season.

Zherdev made it 4-3 at 13:51 of the third when he tapped in a Nash rebound. Jiri Novotny, who had been on the ice for about two minutes, also had an assist.

“I think he played his best game since the start of the season,” Novotny, who played on a line with Zherdev, said. “He’s a huge player and everyone knows that. He’s got confidence right now. He played hard and he played for the team.”

Just under two minutes later Datsyuk tied the game on a wrist shot from the left dot.

Leclaire had 31 saves for the Jackets, while Osgood stopped 36 shots for Detroit.

Columbus hosts Eastern Conference foe Florida Wednesday, travels to Minnesota on Friday and returns home to face Detroit again on Sunday.