2-0 win over Thrashers helps boost Jackets’ mood

COLUMBUS (AP) — Columbus hopes a decisive win can get the Blue Jackets out of their recent funk.

Pascal Leclaire made 21 saves for his league-leading seventh shutout and the Blue Jackets beat the Atlanta Thrashers 2-0 on Wednesday night.

“Guys came in and were ready to play and we played a simple game,” said Leclaire, who was credited with an assist on Dan Fritsche’s goal. “If we play that kind of hockey when our stars come back there’s no reason we shouldn’t win a lot of hockey games.”

Injured Blue Jackets’ forwards Fredrik Modin, Michael Peca and Manny Malhotra were also out of the lineup.

The Thrashers saw their four-game winning streak snapped in their first visit to Columbus in just over four years. Ilya Kovalchuk, the league’s top goal scorer with 29, was held to just two shots.

“We really played hard,” Columbus coach Ken Hitchcock said. “We did an unbelievable job of checking and creating chances in the first two and a half periods.”

With Rick Nash nursing a sore throat, Fritsche and Jared Boll picked up the scoring for Columbus, which entered having tallied only four goals in the last four games, three of them losses.

Fritsche started the scoring with a power-play goal at 7:39 of the first period on a wrist shot down the right wing that snuck under the arm of goalie Kari Lehtonen. Defenseman Ron Hainsey weaved into the Atlanta zone, flicked a backhand pass to an open Fritsche before setting a half-screen near the crease.

The man-advantage tally was only the Blue Jackets’ sixth in their last 58 opportunities.

Boll made it 2-0 early in the second period with his fourth thanks to a persistent forecheck. While linemates Sergei Fedorov and Curtis Glencross created havoc near the Thrashers net, he dragged a loose rebound away from Jim Slater while gliding backwards and slotted a low shot from the edge of the crease just beyond the reach of Lehtonen.