Blue Jackets show they're 'going to fight to the end' with shootout win against Red Wings

DETROIT -- Zach Werenski stood at center ice at Little Caesars Arena on Tuesday, knowing that he had a chance to give the Columbus Blue Jackets a massive shootout win -- and that the laces on his left skate were cut.

The only thing holding his boot onto his foot was a wrap of clear hockey tape.

“My laces were all messed up, and I couldn’t really skate,” he said. “So, when they called me, I was like, ‘Are you guys sure? I’m kind of on one leg here.’ My foot was in the skate but pretty wobbly. It probably made me feel more calm, to be honest, because I was like, ‘You know what? Nothing to lose, really. Just go down there and fire it.’”

The defenseman skated slowly to the right, turned into the middle and picked the upper left corner, and the Blue Jackets defeated the Detroit Red Wings 4-3 after forward Adam Fantilli tied the game 3-3 with 16.2 seconds left in regulation.

The Blue Jackets (39-27-12) reached 90 points, putting them one point ahead of the Red Wings and New York Islanders.

They remain two points behind the Philadelphia Flyers, who defeated the New Jersey Devils 5-1 and are third in the Metropolitan Division, and the Ottawa Senators, who defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning 6-2 and hold the second wild card into the playoffs from the Eastern Conference.

Each team has four games remaining in the regular season.

“We’re going to build on it,” Werenski said. “We’re going to keep going. We’re going to fight to the end and see what happens.”

Columbus badly needed this one.

Last season, the Blue Jackets finished one spot out of the playoffs in the East, two points behind the Montreal Canadiens, who earned the second wild card in the conference.

Entering Tuesday, they were 0-5-1 in their past six games and out of a playoff spot, after they had replaced Dean Evason with Rick Bowness as coach on Jan. 12, gone on a 19-3-4 run and risen to second in the Metro.

“We gotta start winning and winning now,” Fantilli said Tuesday morning. “That’s not lost on us. We know that. I was saying to the guys at dinner last night, like, ‘The feeling from last year is still too fresh to have it happen again.’ So, we’re going to do everything we can to not have that happen again.”

Columbus kept coming back Tuesday.

Defenseman Justin Faulk gave the Red Wings a 2-1 lead at 6:27 of the second period. But Werenski tied it 2-2 on the power play at 10:59 of the second.

Faulk gave the Red Wings a 3-2 lead at 15:14 of the third period. But then forward Sean Monahan won a face-off in the left circle of the offensive zone, forward Kirill Marchenko and Werenski made quick passes to get the puck to Fantilli, and he fired a shot from the right face-off dot past goalie John Gibson with 16.2 seconds to go.

“You got to love our effort,” Bowness said. “We’re down 3-2 in the last five minutes. We didn’t give up, and we kept pushing. So, there’s a lot of fight left in this group.”

Goalie Jet Greaves made seven of his 34 saves in overtime, keeping the game 3-3.

Then came the shootout. After Alex DeBrincat scored for Detroit to lead off the third round, forward Charlie Coyle had to score to keep Columbus alive. He deked Gibson and slipped the puck past his outstretched glove.

“Hopefully not too many heart attacks out there,” Coyle said.

After James van Riemsdyk failed to score for Detroit to lead off the fifth round, Columbus had a chance to win with a goal.

Assistant Mike Haviland called for Werenski.

In overtime, Werenski had fallen behind the net in the Detroit zone, and the laces on his left skate had been cut. Equipment manager Paul DeFazio had taped it up as an emergency fix. Bowness said he didn’t know.

“(Werenski) was trying to yell at me in overtime, and I had no clue what he was saying,” Fantilli said. “After it was over, he calls me over, and he shows me his skate. It was just all clear-taped-up. I was laughing.”

Was Fantilli laughing when Werenski went out for the shootout?

“Well, he’s a good enough skater to get down there on one skate, I think,” he said. “I’m sure they did it tight enough for him.”

Whatever it takes in a crazy playoff race when your hopes are hanging by a thread.

“I don’t know what they were thinking putting me out there, but I got it done,” Werenski said. “So, it’s a fun game to be a part of.”