Friday, February 09, 2007

Glass is Half Full? Okay, maybe 1/4 full

When is a very good hard-skating win against a division-leading opponent like Calgary not a win to hang your hat on? When you got pasted in the three previous games.

The enigmatic Jackets once again show that they can skate with anyone when the focus and effort is there. All the right people were on the plus-side and were involved with the scoring: goals by Vyborny and Modin with assists from Nash, Federov and Zherdev (and Eriksson too). Only 9 penalties total for both teams made it a clean game. Solid goaltending at both ends with Norrena out-dueling McLennan.

This game is how home games should look. The disaster trip out west (ending with losses to Phoenix, Calgary and Edmonton) needs to be forgotten. If it were only that easy...

Misc: When Vyborny finally scored, that broke a string of six periods in which Columbus had not scored. Yikes! Including the win tonight, the Blue Jackets are 6-27-1 when the opponent scores first.