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Comrie leads Coyotes past Blue Jackets in shootout

Dec 15, 2006 - 5:19 AM GLENDALE, Arizona (Ticker) -- Mike Comrie showed the rest of the Phoenix Coyotes how it's done in a shootout.

Comrie scored on his team's third attempt in the shootout, sending the Coyotes to a 5-4 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Mikael Tellqvist prevented all three Blue Jackets from scoring in the shootout, making his best stop on the third shot from Sergei Fedorov.

"Tellqvist was sensational when he had to be," Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky said. "You look for a goaltender to make big saves, and he did that really well. In the shootout, he was really good.

"I don't think anyone could have predicted that those three guys (David Vyborny, Rick Nash and Fedorov) would have been shut out. They are pretty solid breakaway hockey players. He did a really nice job to shut them down."

That save set the stage for Comrie, who had a goal and an assist in regulation. After skating in on Fredrik Norrena, Comrie fired a shot that dribbled between the pads of the goaltender, sealing the win.

"I just tried to get (Norrena) to move early," Comrie said. "He had some good angles on the first two shooters. I was just trying to get him to move right. I didn't go in clean, it trickled past the goalie just enough."

Comrie, who had 30 goals and 30 assists for the Coyotes last season, gave Phoenix a short-lived advantage in regulation.

The 5-9 center snapped a 2-2 tie with a power-play tally midway through the second period. After Ladislav Nagy blasted a shot from 20 feet out that hit the right goalpost, Comrie was there to knock in the rebound.

Five minutes later, Travis Roche's shot during a man advantage ricocheted off the skate of fellow defenseman Ed Jovanovski, who turned and blasted a shot past Norrena for a 4-2 lead.

However, the Blue Jackets evened the contest with late goals in the session.

Fedorov scored on a shorthanded breakaway, taking a pass from a sprawled Nash and wristing a shot past Tellqvist to the stick side with 2:50 left in the period. With just over a minute to go, Nash dug the puck off the boards and passed to Vyborny, whose one-timer beat the netminder.

"Halfway through the first period, we didn't have the energy we have had in a lot of games," Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock said. "When we were down 4-2, there was a lot of game left. We were hanging our heads a bit and we just had to get back to work."

"We didn't make it easy on ourselves, we blew a 4-2 lead," Tellqvist said. "They are a skilled team up front. You can't give them many scoring chances. They have three lines who can score as well as anyone in the league."

Tellqvist stopped 21 shots for Phoenix, which improved to 6-0-1 in its last seven home games.

While the Coyotes scored twice on their nine power-play attempts, the Blue Jackets went 0-for-5 with the man advantage.

"We were a little disappointed in the shorthanded goal we gave up, but other than that, our specialty teams were pretty solid," Gretzky said. "We played pretty solid killing penalties and had some good opportunities on the power play."

Rick Nash had a goal and two assists and Norrena made 25 saves for the Blue Jackets, who had their five-game winning streak snapped.

"I don't think we came out with too much thunder, but at least we got a point out of the game," Norrena said. "I don't know if we deserved it, but we got the point. I did a bad job of finding the puck through screens today."