By Steph Greegor
FOXSportsOhio.com
Standing 6-foot-4 and dressed in a light blue T-shirt and jeans after practice Friday, Columbus Blue Jackets goaltender Steve Mason looked calm and confident with just a little over a week left before the Feb. 27 trade deadline.
"It's been a tough year," he said. "There's been a lot of soul searching."
The 2008-09 Calder Memorial Trophy winner has wandered off from his expected path of glory. While the two seasons after his stellar playoff showing in 2008-09 left much to be desired, this season took him to a place no one ever thought he'd go: The back-up to the back-up. After the Jackets started the season off with eight straight losses, winning only two of 12 in the month of October, and several failed attempts to get Mason back to Vezina-nominated form over a series of failed starts thereafter, it wasn't long before back-up goalie Curtis Sanford took over Mason's crease.
"With all the promise of the offseason signings, coming into training camp, I had nothing but high expectations from a personal standpoint and a team standpoint," said Mason. "I was feeling really good about my game, and then, with the injuries we had to other goaltenders in camp and the eight straight losses, to be a part of all those losses and not be able to get out of the net and sit back and refresh, it just had a snowball effect that was tough to get out of."
And not just for Mason, but the whole team. The Blue Jackets sit dead last in the league with just 40 points. Dreams of taking the playoff ice in a Jackets sweater are long gone from the players' minds. Now, they sit and wait to see if their name will be called up for a trade.
Defenseman James Wisniewski calls it a weird season.
"I've never seen anything like it," he said.
Mason, carrying a .887 save percentage going into today's game against the Chicago Blackhawks, has been the focal point of nearly everything that went wrong in the beginning of the season. He allowed no less than three goals in every one of those first eight losses. After that, he looked lost in the net at times, out of position and giving up big rebounds while letting in soft goals. He was struggling to find his Calder game.
Still, captain Rick Nash said Mason can't be the fall guy for a team that hasn't played well as a whole.
"It wasn't all his fault," said Nash. "It was also the players in front of him not getting the job done."
Wisniewski said he didn't know how many times he said to Mason after a game, "Sorry man, you deserve better than that. You deserve better than how I played. Or how we, as a team, played."
"I tell you what, the games that Sanford played, not to take anything away from him because he's played great, but we seemed to help him out. I don't know what happened sometimes when Mase would come in . . . we'd have an off-night; it wasn't fair to him," said Wisniewski. "Even games he's played great that we lost 2-1, we can't score. We can't score for him. The guy battles so hard and he's got it in him. . . . We're behind him 100 percent."
When asked if it was accurate to say that the less-than-stellar play in front of Mason had to do with having little faith or confidence in Mason's play versus Sanford's, Wisniewski replied: "I don't think you can say that."
"This season, I don't know if I can explain it, it's just been a roller coaster of emotions. Highs and lows. Mostly lows. Things that just happened. You can't put your finger on it. It's hard to correct it," said Wisniewski. "You know that saying ‘s*** happens?' That's how this whole season has gone. This whole season."
Mason said he takes his part of the blame for what's happened. Reflecting back to the early part of his career, he said his game likely would have benefited from putting in extra time in the minors rather than being rushed into the NHL.
"It's so easy to say that now. You know, at the time any kid wants to make the jump to the NHL and I was fortunate to be able to do that. It's very rare a goalie does that. So at the time I was more than thrilled," said Mason. "We had success right off the bat so it was easy for people to say that we made the right choice; now it's easy to look back and say, ‘Maybe you should have spent a year or two in the American League (AHL)."
"From my standpoint, it might have been better for me to grow mentally just to get adjusted to the professional game, but I'm not going to complain; I've had some really good experiences here in the four years I've been here and some really crappy ones at the same time," said Mason. "This year has definitely been a building stone. There's been a lot of different things I never thought I'd have to go through, but at the end of the day, I'm 23 years old and if it's going to make me better for the next 10 or 15 years then it's well worth it."
What's making him better as of late, said head coach Todd Richards, is the time he's putting in off the ice with goaltending coach Ian Clark. Mason, in after Sanford went out after re-injuring his back, saw a pair of good games last week in a 2-1 win over the St. Louis Blues and a 3-1 victory over the Minnesota Wild. The success, said Richards, was from "spending extra time on the ice, getting here early, spending time watching video, a lot of those things have led (Mason) to that success. That's what I expect out of him (as the season continues) and hopefully he expects and demands the same thing out of himself."
Mason said his work with Clark has covered "absolutely everything," from, "technique to positioning to the mental aspect," he said.
The mental aspect of this season has been particularly damning for Mason. It's easy to forget that most 23 year olds get to have their growing pains under a cloak of anonymity. The same can't be said for Mason, who just shook his head with a "yeah," when reminded of his journey onto Twitter a short time ago that quickly led to a series of hateful tweets and bashing.
"It's never easy to have negative stuff said about you. It's not like I'm going out there trying to lose hockey games, you know, every day I'm going out there I'm trying to have the best result and play the best I can. Some days just won't go your way and when people are constantly harassing, you know because it is, it's almost harassing the things that people say to you," said Mason of both the hate-filled tweets and the overall general media and public criticism. "At the same time you're thinking, ‘I don't go to your desk and give you crap for what you're doing.'"
"You just have to look at it and say the only opinions that really matter are the guys in this room and the coaching staff," said Mason. "The guys have had my back the entire way and it's never wavered and it's something I'm really appreciative of. Every time I've been in the net and got the win you can see the guys are really happy for me."
And no one more so than Nash, who said the hardest part about watching Mason struggle this year has been the fact that everyone knows what he can really do.
"The thing with Steve, the funny thing with him, is he's been the candidate for the Vezina, he's won the Calder Trophy, so you know it's there; where, with some other young prospects coming up, you haven't seen it," said Nash. "But with (Mason) we already saw it and we believe in him."
The road going forward will not be easy for Mason. The critics are circling. Some have said he has peaked or his best days are behind him. Or maybe, his best days in Columbus are behind him. The chirping isn't far from Mason's ear.
"There has been a lot of people saying, ‘We're done with him,' outside the organization," said Mason. "Everybody's entitled to their opinion. The best thing about that is you have an opportunity to prove them wrong."
And for now, Richards said Mason has earned the right to carry his head high, saying his goalie's confidence level is something that has improved his game.
"I think you get confidence from investing in yourself. You get it from spending time and working on your game and I think he's done that. So he's earned the right to feel confident," said Richards. "I think along with the confidence comes trust from his teammates. And I think it goes both ways. Players trust that he's going to make the save and I think he trusts that his teammates are going to eliminate second opportunities and take the options away to his left and his right so he can really focus on the shot."
Despite the rough road, there is one thing that has never changed for Steve Mason: "I've never had a doubt in my ability. That's something I've always been confident in," he said. "I believe that I can be one of the best goalies in the league and whether that takes another year or another two, I'm confident I'm going to reach it."
