Nashville Shoot Their Way To Victory Over Columbus

The good news is that Steve Mason stopped 45 shots, but the bad news is that the Blue Jackets lost in the shootout after a shot skids just past Mason. Nashville just kept shooting all game and it could have been ugly, but Mason kept the Blue Jackets in the game and it’s the third out of the last four games in which it went into Shootout mode, but they didn’t pull out the victory this time.

Nashville’s goaltender Pekke Rinne was as advertised, he’s a good one. Although he allowed just as many regulation goals as Mason and saw nearly 50% less shots on the night. The Blue Jackets goals came from Anton Stralman and two from R.J. Umberger, who has been on a tear recently. Stralman has improved the Blue Jackets’ power play a lot, since they were near the bottom of the league last season.

It’s nice that the Blue Jackets have been able to pull out these close games, there have been many games so far this year where Columbus haven’t received at least one point. They are currently 12-6-3 after 21 games so far, so they’re basically done playing their first quarter of games this year. If you asked them at the beginning of the year if they would be happy with 27 points after their first 21 games, I would believe most of the players would be content with that number. They didn’t start out this well last season, but they needed a late surge to make the playoffs. They would currently be the 6th seend in the Western Conference playoffs, not too bad, but they could play much better later this season and improve their seed.

Tags: anton stralman, r.j. umberger, steve mason