The NHL Closer is written by Greg Wyshynski, of The FanHouse and The Fourth Period. He is also the author of Glow Pucks And 10-Cent Beer.

If you haven't see Blue Jackets' star Rick Nash scoring the "eye-popping flurry of head fakes, shoulder shimmies and puck dekes" goal of the season thus far, you will after the jump. It's doper than dope, made even more so by virtue of having won Columbus's game against red-hot Phoenix, 4-3, with 22 seconds left. It was the kind of highlight that can never occur in an overtime skills competition because it was so spontaneous and involved defensemen playing, you know, defense. If the Edmonton Oilers/Washington Capitals' 12 rounds of yawn were Reason No. 1,488,098, Nash's goal was Reason No. 1,488,099 why the shootout can suck a dick.

Amazingly, Nash almost cost his team the game with a penalty late in the third, after which Martin Hanzal told Columbus to dere-lick his balls by scoring 77 seconds before the Goal of the Year to tie the game on the power play.

And then Nash earned redemption by adding Keith Ballard, Derek Morris and Mikael Tellqvist to his bitch list:

Obviously, it had everything to do with Nash's change in mouthpiece. The New York Times' Slapshot blog has a crisper copy of the goal via the NHL's annoying un-user friendly vid...

Read the full post at Deadspin

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