"I don't know what the (heck) I did," Mason said. "A little bit of instinct. I just saw it and I reacted."

Sprawling back toward the net, and flipping on his belly, Mason extended his right arm and swatted away a glorious point-blank scoring chance by Vancouver's Kyle Wellwood with only 1:43 remaining.

That save, and an exhaustive penalty kill by the Blue Jackets the rest of the way, preserved a 3-2 victory before 13,299 in Nationwide Arena.

Fredrik Modin, Andrew Murray and Kristian Huselius scored for the Blue Jackets, who came back from 1-0 and 2-1 deficits.

But the first star of the game was Mason, who made 30 saves and improved to 6-2-1. The postgame talk was all about "the save."

"The save Mason made was unbelievable," Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock said. "Terrific.

"It's about time we had something like that go our way. We've had lots of games like this that have gone against us, and tonight it went the other way."

Blue Jackets fans have seen this movie plenty of times the last many seasons. But this time, the Jackets wrote a different ending.

They led 3-2 with 1:56 remaining in the third when defenseman Fedor Tyutin went to the penalty box for cross-checking.

Canucks winger Daniel Sedin took a shot from the left faceoff circle that Mason kicked aside, but the puck got caught in the jungle of legs and sticks and ended up trickling toward the left post, where Wellwood approached.

Mason swept his hand as far out as possible, swatting the puck behind the net.

The save appeared to give the penalty killers -- Jason Chimera, Manny Malhotra, Jan Hejda and Mike Commodore -- an extra jolt of adrenaline.

They needed it, too. With 1:16 left to play, the Canucks pulled goaltender Cory Schneider for an extra skater, giving them a six-on-four advantage the rest of the way.

It was exhausting to watch, as the Blue Jackets couldn't clear the puck deep enough to bring out fresh penalty killers.

"I looked up at the clock and there was still 20 seconds left," Chimera said. "I couldn't believe it.

"It was chaos out there. It was all over the place, but we got through it."

Mason made four saves during the sequence, including the show-stopper on Wellwood. Two other Vancouver shots went wide of the net and one was blocked, by Chimera.

"I told (the penalty killers) right at the final buzzer that they did a great job," Mason said. "It's a key part of the game, obviously, and we put everything we had into it.

"It's a big win. It's good to see us get rewarded for a game like this."

Modin scored a power-play goal at 9:30 of the second period to tie the score at 1.

That's right, a power-play goal. It ended a 2-of-53 swoon for the Blue Jackets with a man advantage.

With 4:44 remaining and the score 2-2, Rick Nash took a puck down low, skated it behind the net, weaved through traffic in the left faceoff circle and fed Huselius for a tap-in goal.

Thanks to Mason and the penalty killers, it stood as the game-winner.

aportzline@dispatch.com