As Fredrik Modin dealt with the media in the Blue Jackets' dressing room after a 3-2 win over the Nashville Predators last night, an ice bag dripped from around his right ankle and each of his sentences was punctuated with a wince.

There were two topics with Modin: his goal at 8:39 of the third period that gave the Blue Jackets a 3-0 lead, and his willingness to block a shot with his already tender right foot in the closing minutes to helped his team avoid a monumental collapse.

"You can look at it like it's too bad (the puck) hit the same foot," Modin said. "But I look at it like this: The puck didn't go into our net.

"The way the game was going, they were moving the puck around on us pretty good. That's a shot that can't get through in that situation. I needed to block it, and it got blocked."

The Predators, who have treated the Blue Jackets like a kid brother the past few seasons, had roared two-thirds of the way back and had a crowd of 13,775 in Nationwide Arena on edge, expecting the worst.

"The way this season has gone, nothing has been smooth," defenseman Mike Commodore said. "So, yeah, I could feel the nervousness in the air.

"As a group, we had to collect ourselves and stand up."

Derick Brassard and Kristian Huselius also scored goals for the Blue Jackets, who snapped a five-game losing streak against Nashville. Goaltender Steve Mason made 29 saves.

But the game came down to a nervy final 4 1/2 minutes.

Modin stood in the way of a shot by Kevin Klein with 2:30 remaining, limped off the ice at the next stoppage of play and returned for the final shift of the game.

The rest of the Blue Jackets stood up the Predators in the neutral zone the rest of the way, making it difficult for Nashville to pull goaltender Pekka Rinne for an extra attacker.

Meanwhile, Mason, who has struggled mightily this season, stood tall as the play got scrambly.

"That sort of thing happens so much against that team," Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock said, "that sometimes I think you expect bad things to happen.

"Something bad has happened to us a lot this season, but it didn't this time."

The game got off to a glacial pace. There were so many dump-ins from the neutral zone in both directions that the game was almost hypnotic. During one stretch spanning the first and second periods, the Blue Jackets went 18 minutes, 28 seconds without a shot on goal.

At 16:10 of the second period, the dump-fest ended. Brassard redirected a hard, low shot from the point by defenseman Milan Jurcina, beating Rinne.

The Blue Jackets added two goals in a 39-second span in the third. Huselius finished a tic-tac-toe, tac-toe-tic power-play goal at 8:00, and Modin scored a greasy goal to make it 3-0.

The Preds made it 3-1 on Martin Erat's wrister from the left circle at 10:06, and then 3-2 on Patric Hornqvist's goal as a power play ended at 15:36.

The final 4:24 was dicey.

"We had a lot of guys pay the price to win this game," Mason said. "That's huge. That's what it's going to take if we're going to play our way back into this."

aportzline@dispatch.com