2000-01 Inaugural Season

Lore & Background

When the NHL granted Columbus an expansion franchise in 1997, the city's sports community—already home to the Crew in MLS and the Clippers in minor-league baseball—breathed a collective sigh of relief. The primary ownership group, led by John H. McConnell, assembled the Blue Jackets with some overlap from the Hunt family (who owned the Crew), but the two franchises were not directly under the same ownership. The decision to site the team in a brand-new downtown arena (which opened in September 2000, the same year as the inaugural season) gave the franchise a physical home before the first puck dropped. The name 'Blue Jackets' was chosen to echo the Ohio militia regiments of the 1800s, and the iconic 'J' logo with its lightning-bolt slash became an instant symbol of the city's new hockey identity.

The 2000–01 roster was assembled quickly: a mix of young draft picks, journeyman forwards, and a handful of veterans brought in to stabilize the lineup. Dave King took the head-coaching reins, and the team's early games were less about winning and more about establishing routines, chemistry, and a sense of who these players were to the fans filling the new seats. Attendance was strong from the opening night, and the downtown location meant that thousands of supporters could walk out of office buildings and straight into the arena, something no previous Columbus sport had offered at this scale.

The season's narrative was not one of playoff contention but of foundation-laying. Fans remember the inaugural campaign less for its standings and more for the feeling of watching a team find its voice: the first goal scored in Columbus, the first hat trick, the first time the crowd roared in unison behind a young goaltender making a save. Those 'firsts' became the emotional bedrock on which every subsequent season was measured, and the 2000–01 Blue Jackets remain, for many supporters, the team that made hockey feel like it truly belonged in Ohio.

Reader's Guide

For Columbus supporters, the 2000–01 season is less a set of box scores and more a founding myth. The downtown arena—new, bright, and still echoing with the smell of construction—gave the team a physical anchor that the city's other sports had never quite achieved at this level. Walking to a game after work, squeezing through the turnstiles with a hot dog in one hand and a program in the other, became a ritual that defined a generation of local fans.

The name and the logo mattered as much as the hockey. 'Blue Jackets' connected the team to a piece of Ohio history most people had only heard about in a history class, and the lightning-bolt 'J' gave supporters a symbol they could put on a hat, a bumper sticker, a child's bedroom wall. In a city that had waited years for an NHL team, that identity arrived all at once and stuck.

Even decades later, the inaugural season is referenced in the same way a family references the year they moved into a house: not because everything was perfect, but because it was the first time the lights were on and the door was open. When a fan says 'I was there in '01,' they are not talking about a 20-win team. They are talking about the night the city became a hockey city, and that memory is the one that still drives them through the turnstile every January.

Did You Know?

• The name 'Blue Jackets' was chosen to honor the 19th-century Ohio militia regiments that wore blue coats, linking the modern franchise to a piece of the state's antebellum history.
• The primary ownership group for the Blue Jackets was led by John H. McConnell and was not directly the same as the Crew's ownership, though there was some overlap with the Hunt family.