"We won the hockey game"

Wow, what a game from the Columbus Blue Jackets against the Detroit Red Wings. Where do I start? Here are some of the stats that stand out.

The Blue Jackets' six-goal margin of victory is the largest in franchise history.

The Blue Jackets' eight goals is a new franchise high in a game

This is the second time in a week that Detroit has given up 8 goals in a game (Feb 28 vs. NSH)

Rick Nash scores his fourth career hat trick, now tops in franchise history (Tyler Wright 3)

Three of four Rick Nash hat tricks have come against the Red Wings

All three of Rick Nash's goals were unassisted, the first time in franchise history a hat trick has been scored without the benefit of an assist

Nash, Manny Malhotra, Fedor Tyutin, and Jan Hejda were all +3 in the game

Steve Mason faced 46 shots on goal, the second most in his NHL career (48 SOG against - Dec 17 vs San Jose 2-1 OT Win)

Raffi Torres now has three goals in the past five games after scoring only three goals in his first thirty games this season

Antoine Vermette scores an assist in his first game as a Blue Jacket, playing 18:02

The Blue Jackets are now 8-0 this season when Andrew Murray scores a goal

What a game for the Columbus Blue Jackets. The fans showed up in Joe Louis Arena, which isn't exactly common. The Blue Jackets win the game, again, 8-2.

Steve Mason's job in net will completely get overshadowed in this victory and I'm pretty sure he won't mind that. After Aaron Portzline called out Ken Hitchcock in his blog before the game about holding Mason back from playing in this game, Mason returned to form as he had several significant stops during the game, most of the them coming in the second period when the game was still tight. Despite winning by six goals, Mason kept that prospect alive with his great pad saves. Steve Mason gets my third star of the game, just because of the obsessive scoring.

My second star of the game would be R.J. Umberger...he scored twice and assisted once. He has been a man among boys during the second half of the season and he has been a great pickup by General Manager Scott Howson

Obviously, my number one star would be EL CAPITAN. Rick Nash scores three times in the game. The first was on a short-handed breakaway. The second was right in front of the net as he picked up a turnover, stared at Chris Osgood for a couple of seconds and then fired the puck. The third goal came as he charged up the ice and was able to flick the puck in past Ty Conklin, who replaced Chris Osgood after the Murray goal. Rick Nash now has 31 goals in the season and it's the fourth time in his career that he has scored 30+ goals. And one more thing...Brian Rafaski is going to have nightmares tonight and Rick Nash is going to be the villain in all of them. Rafalski had the turnovers that directly influenced Nash's first two goals. And on Nash's third, Rafalski was the one that was challenging Nash on the forecheck.

Now allow me to talk about what this means for the average Blue Jackets fan. By the way, completely random note, the NHL website is SUCKING right now...Toronto must be burning right now because the ugly Jackets just did an amazing thing...anyway, back to this historic game. If you were to ask any Blue Jackets fan who their biggest rival is in the NHL, you would probably receive the answer "Detroit". Not that I'm disputing that, but generally in a rivalry, it needs to have both teams playing well and the game decisions to be generally half and half. Not so for the Blue Jackets - Red Wings games.

This game is a HUGE step for the organization to shred its horrible history in the league and show the NHL that they are finally ready to take that next step. Will that happen? Well, we still need to work hard. We have four very tough games coming up. Home against Boston, Pittsburgh and Detroit and road game against Chicago in the United Center. Hopefully the team will respond well to this great win and move on from this in the march to the playoffs. Go Jackets!