Mason’s Mastery Leading Columbus to Playoffs

As the regular season comes to a close there have been a lot of great stories to develop and perhaps more to come as the playoffs approach us. Whether it’s the Bruins’ unexpected rise to prominence, San Jose’s ability to play at a high level from wire-to-wire; or Florida’s fight for a playoff spot and Nashville’s continued push toward the playoffs despite little money and rumors of them leaving Nashville swirling around from time to time. But arguably the best story of the year has been the unbelievable performance of Columbus Blue Jacket netminder Steve Mason who has seemingly come out of nowhere to take the league by storm and has Columbus poised to make their first post-season appearance in the franchise’s brief history. Mason has put up incredible numbers posting a 2.24 GAA, .918 save percentage and a record of 31-18-5. Mason always seems to be solid when he absolutely needs to be and has (get this) TEN shutouts! The next closes to Mason are three goalies tied with seven which is absolutely unreal. If you had asked around in many hockey circles last year and in the early stages of this year many respectable hockey minds couldn’t tell you anything about Steve Mason if they had even heard of him at all. The Blue Jackets’ netminder has been consistent all season and despite all of his success perhaps Mason’s best quality is not his glove, positioning in the net, or any other technical attribute, it is the fact that he is only 20 years old. It is unlikely that Mason will be able to continue this year’s success as the years go by but if there’s one thing we know for sure it’s that he’ll be giving NHL opponents a really hard time for many years to come. With a goalie like Mason and a vast assortment of other young talents assembled in Columbus this is a team that can make noise in the playoffs not only this year but for many years to come… the folks in Columbus have reason to be very excited.

Conference Realignment Good for NHL

As I watched the games on Saturday’s schedule I started thinking about the remarkable lack of balance between the two conferences as far as their respective travel schedules are concerned. On Saturday Nashville went to L.A. after playing Anaheim on Friday and Columbus to Minnesota while on Sunday Chicago goes to San Jose. These are only a few examples of a number of conference games these teams, as well as other in the west, play all the time that require them to travel many miles and across 2 or 3 time zones routinely not to mention the games against eastern conference teams. On the other hand, with the exception of a few games against western conference teams, no team in the east has to leave the eastern time-zone once to play anyone in conference. It is unfair to put the burden of traveling so far so often on the players and organizations in one group but not the other. Extra travel costs a lot of money and it wears the players down a bit. My solution is to keep the two conferences but do not split it into east and west but instead perhaps north and south so that teams in both conferences travel just as much as the other. It is not only fair but it causes fans to pay greater attention to teams out west (or east) who might not otherwise do so resulting in greater U.S. exposure for the league since roughly 1/3 of the U.S. population lives in the east.