Nationwide Arena hosts 1st official Blue Jackets game
Editor’s note: Each Sunday, The Dispatch features a front page from this week in history to celebrate the newspaper’s 150 years of publication, with a little update on what’s happened since.
Columbus has too often considered itself the little sibling of Ohio’s Three Cs.
Though the state’s largest city, it was the only one without a major league sports presence (unless one considers the football Buckeyes a college equivalent). And worse, Columbus was so overlooked that on ESPN it required the explainer “, Ohio” to differentiate itself from, say Columbus, Georgia, best known for that other Columbus State.
That changed on Oct. 7, 2000, when the Columbus Blue Jackets of the National Hockey League took the ice as an expansion team at Nationwide Arena for the franchise’s first official game.
That inaugural contest — which the Blue Jackets led 3-0 after the first period — didn’t end so well for them, as the Chicago Blackhawks scored the next five goals to win 5-3.
But the Blue Jackets have anchored the Arena District for more than two decades, drawing fans to bars and restaurants and pumping money into the local economy.
The team qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in 2009, but were swept by the Detroit Red Wings.
Columbus ultimately got its first playoff game victory (at Pittsburgh) in 2014, and five years later won its first playoff series in the 2019 postseason against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Jackets’ 2021-22 regular season opens Oct. 14 with a home game against the Arizona Coyotes.