Blue Jackets embarrassed in 9-1 loss to Detroit (11/11/09)
by J. Justin Boggs, Columbus Wired - Photos by Joel Torres

The Columbus Blue Jackets came into Wednesday’s tilt with the Detroit Red Wings on top of the Central Division and on a five game point-streak. Detroit, on the other hand, was trying to bounce back after a 5-1 loss to a struggling Toronto Maple Leafs club.

Detroit squashed any momentum the Blue Jackets might have had going forward in the season with a 9-1 victory over Columbus in front of 15,304 in Nationwide Arena. The loss for the Columbus was the most amount of goals allowed at home and tied for their largest margin of defeat in franchise history. It was also the most lopsided loss to the Red Wings.

“It’s an opportunity lost because it’s a division game and because of the way we played,” Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock said. “We didn’t play committed or hard against a genuine opponent. It’s a disappointment in the attitude towards the competition.”

“We got out to a good start,” Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock said. “I obviously wasn’t very happy with our last game and I let the guys know that. We played with good structure tonight.”

The Red Wings had 14 different players score points; six of them had multiple-points.  Niklas Kronwall and Justin Abdelkader both had two goals.

Blue Jackets goaltender Steve Mason was in net for the first seven minutes and 31 seconds of the game and was replaced by Mathieu Garon who played a pretty solid 12:29 of hockey allowing one goal on 12 shots against. However Hitchcock went back to Mason in the second period and he was pounded. Mason gave up eight goals on 27 shots against.

“(Mason’s) going to have to bury this with the rest of us,” Hitchcock said. “He’s our guy and he’s going to have to fight with the rest of us. I just felt the (early) goals weren’t his fault. He needed to catch his breath.”

Detroit got the game-winning goal on the second shot of the game, which was coincidentally the second goal of the match. Daniel Cleary scored 1:05 into the game and Patrick Datsyuk notched the eventual game-winner less than two minutes later. Kris Draper and Kronwall added goals later in the first period as they outshot their Red Wings outshot the Blue Jackets 18-7 in the opening frame.

Columbus got a goal by Rick Nash early midway through the second to make it a 4-1 game and for a split second, there was a pulse by the Blue Jackets. That beat was quickly stopped less than three minutes later when the Red Wings’ Todd Bertuzzi and Ville Leino notched goals to go up 6-1.

Kronwall added his second goal of the match and Abdelkader posted a pair in the third in a not very spirited period.

Following the game, many Columbus players said they wanted to simply forget about the game and move forward.

“When we win big games, you move on pretty quickly,” Nash said. “We’ve got to make sure this game is forgotten pretty quickly.”

“Just put it behind you,” Blue Jackets forward Jason Chimera said. “For the last week, we were doing some good things but it kind of snowballed on us tonight.”

But not so fast according to Hitchcock.

“We will talk about it tonight and then we will put it behind us,” Hitchcock said in his postgame press conference. “We’re not going to put it behind us and just write it off. This is a building process and we’ve been building it the wrong way and we’ve been fighting it. We got away with a couple wins who were doing the same things we were. We played one period or half a period and won hockey games. We really got schooled today. We got schooled by a hungry team that got beat 5-1 the last game and they were ready to play and we weren’t.”

News and notes:

Wednesday was Hitchcock’s 1000^th game as a head coach in the NHL; a milestone that has only been matched by 15 other coaches in league history. Blue Jackets forward Raffi Torres went down with an injury late in the first as he took a shot from a teammate in the mouth which drew blood onto the ice. Hitchcock said after the game that Torres will not play Friday night and it is unknown how long he will be out past that. Nash’s goal was his fifth in the last six games.