The hot topic of conversation around the NHL this week was Capitals’ superstar Alex Ovechkin’s omission from the All-Star Game starting lineup.
Unfortunately for Columbus Blue Jackets’ goaltender Steve Mason, he was snubbed all together from the mid-winter classic on Jan. 25 in Montreal. He will instead play at Bell Centre the day before in the YoungStars game – a companion event for the league’s top first and second-year players. That’s still a bit of an insult to a 20-year-old rookie who leads the NHL in three out of four major goaltending statistics.
Mason led his injury-depleted club into Verizon Center Friday evening and did all the snubbing himself, denying 45 Capitals shots en route to a 3-0 shutout win. It was the second time Mason had whitewashed the vaunted Washington lineup this season, having posted another 3-0 victory over the Caps in Ohio on Nov. 29. Mason has denied all 71 Capitals shots faced this season, including 15 off the stick of Ovechkin.
“It’s a pretty good ratio for myself,” said Mason. “[Ovechkin’s] got a heck of a shot. Some of the shots you just drop down and hope it hits you, because it’s coming high and you don’t know where it’s going.”
A gametime decision due to upper-body muscle spasms, Mason appeared almost robotic, shutting down a sustained Washington attack that included 16 power-play shots.
Mason, who faced a barrage of shots early on, credited seeing so much rubber with helping him “loosen up” and feel stronger as the game progressed.
“He played very well,” said Caps rookie defenseman Karl Alzner, who played with Mason in the 2008 World Junior Championship, where the goalie dominated the world’s best young talent and claimed MVP honors and a gold medal for Canada. “He makes saves like that all the time. And if there’s rebounds, (there are) not usually too many of them. So he did well. And that’s the second time we’ve had a tough one with him. We were getting lots of shots.”
Despite the handful of headhunting bombs Ovechkin fired at Mason, Washington in general was not able to test the goalie high, allowing him to kick shot after shot to the corners.
“We were talking about trying to get up high on him,” said Alzner. “But all the time we were shooting from so far out that he was doing a good job. It’s hard to get a good shot up high on a goalie like that. So it’s a tough one, but I guess it happens.”
Mason’s sudden ascension to elite-goaltender status in the NHL is rare, but not surprising to his former teammate:
“I don’t think it happens too often where goalies come straight out of junior and do what he’s doing,” said Alzner. “I don’t think it actually happens at all. But he’s got the talent to me. He’s big, he plays the puck awesome, (and) his angles are good. I guess I should have expected this from a guy like him.”
