On a night that was anything but ordinary in so many ways, the feeling was a familiar one for Columbus Blue Jackets fans.
The Jackets had jumped out to a 3-1 lead against the hated Red Wings, just two nights after handing the Wings a 5-2 defeat up in Detroit. All they needed to do was run out the final 20 minutes of the game and they would have sole possession of the top wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
But the first goal of the third period came from Detroit’s Patrick Kane, a familiar villain. He cut the Jackets’ lead to 3-2 just 3:34 into the period. It stayed that way for 13 more minutes before Alex DeBrincat tied it at the 16:36 mark. A night that started out with so much joy and excitement had suddenly swung so dramatically against the Jackets. Now, the question seemed to be whether they could hold off Detroit’s momentum and get the game to overtime and perhaps salvage a crucial point in the playoff race.
This was nothing new. After the first 10 minutes in franchise history, not much has come easy for the Columbus Blue Jackets or their fans.
The puck dropped for the first game on October 7, 2000, and in the span of 9:20 of game clock, the Jackets jumped out to a 3-0 lead on the visiting Chicago Blackhawks. The scene inside Nationwide Arena was absolute bedlam. Then Columbus gave up five unanswered goals, and lost its first shot in the national hockey spotlight, 5-3.
That spotlight hasn’t found its way back to Central Ohio very often in the intervening 24 years and change.
The high point in nearly a quarter-century of Blue Jackets history came in a shocking first-round sweep of the top-seeded Tampa Bay Lighting in 2019, after which the Jackets jumped out to a 2-1 lead over Boston in the second round before falling in six games. To date, these are the only times in franchise history that a home crowd in Columbus has been able to celebrate a win that did more than just even a series.
The year after that, they won a qualifying round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs in front of an empty arena before getting dispatched by the Lightning in what was officially labeled as the first round of the playoffs.
In the four years since, Jackets fans have spent a lot more time calculating draft lottery odds than playoff odds. They’ve been bad, but not bad enough to be truly memorable or to win the NHL’s Draft Lottery. They’ve been closer to an NHL version of a non-playable character than the spotlight. Their main role, it has seemed at times, was to provide the notable teams with someone to play against.
The 2025 NHL Stadium Series game in Columbus was first announced on February 17, 2024. At the time, the Blue Jackets, Florida Panthers, and the nameless team in Utah were the only franchises in the league that had never played in one of the signature outdoor events.
The matchup of the team from Columbus against the team from Michigan, played inside Ohio Stadium, made for easy storylines. The national hockey spotlight would finally return to Central Ohio.
The NHL does a remarkable job with the Stadium Series game. The attention to detail is impeccable, and represented a neat blend of Ohio State football traditions, and the Blue Jackets’ own unique brand.
Everything about the day felt big-time, especially for a franchise whose list of big-time moments remains short. A crowd of 94,751 packed Ohio Stadium for the game, the second-largest in NHL history.
However, much of the pregame scene in and around Ohio Stadium on Saturday felt borrowed from the Buckeyes. ESPN’s pregame show came to town, and the first non-ESPN personality on stage was Brutus.
The Ohio State band played a pregame concert, and the Blue Jackets passed through St. John Arena before walking across Woody Hayes Drive and in to the north rotunda of Ohio Stadium, a tradition straight out of an Ohio State football Saturday.
The crowd, made up mostly of Blue Jackets fans, got an O-H-I-O chant rolling around the Horseshoe as the teams warmed up.
The pregame show featured the literal signature move of the Ohio State University’s band, Script Ohio.
The constant references to Ohio State, and particularly Buckeye football made sense. That’s the big-time program in town. They’re one of the winningest teams in history, the defending national champion, and the central body around which everything in the region seems to orbit. You want a big-time sporting event in Columbus? Paint it scarlet and gray.
But a funny thing happened throughout the evening. The Buckeye-centric focus toned down a little, and Columbus’ other team took center stage. The “O-H-I-O” chants from earlier gave way to “C-B-J.”
The score was tied at 3 with just over three minutes to play. The Blue Jackets had surrendered a two-goal lead, and the franchise that has spent the better part of a quarter-century under its own personal dark cloud seemed on the verge of turning a rare day in the sun into another dreary finish. The “here we go again” was palpable.
But then Justin Danforth won a battle for the puck and knocked home his own rebound for a 4-3 lead. You’ll have to take my word for the second part of that. This photo is the save of the initial shot. The next frame mainly features the jubilant raised arms of Blue Jackets fans, losing their minds.
The Jackets then spent the next minute or two tempting fate by hitting the post twice after Detroit pulled its goalie, before Adam Fantilli knocked some insurance home into the empty net.
The Blue Jackets won, 5-3, in a game that might help remind the nation that Columbus doesn’t just have a hockey team, it has one with a fanbase that can show up 90,000 strong on a cold night. And that fanbase has a team that now sits all alone as the first wild card in the Eastern Conference.
This was a night that was a long time coming in a lot of ways. Columbus and its famous football stadium were long overdue to host one of the NHL’s outdoor events. Blue Jackets fans were owed a night like this to celebrate not just the growth of hockey in Central Ohio, but the growth of this Blue Jackets team. And this team was long overdue for some positive national attention.
The Stadium Series game garnered more focus in Columbus than any regular season game in recent memory – maybe even since that first night in franchise history in October 2000.
Now this young Blue Jackets team potentially stands a month and a half away from a surprising playoff berth. Only one of their remaining regular season games is scheduled for national TV and that has more to do with Alex Ovechkin’s chase for the all-time goal-scoring record than anything else.
But Saturday night inside Ohio Stadium, the Blue Jackets showed the nation that Columbus can be a contender in something other than football.
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