2000-01 Inaugural Season
One city, one new arena, one season that lit the fuse on a decade of identity.
The 2000–01 season marked the arrival of the Columbus Blue Jackets to the NHL as an expansion franchise, bringing professional ice hockey to central Ohio for the first time. After years of speculation and a formal NHL expansion approval in 1997, the city finally got its team, and the inaugural campaign became a defining chapter in the franchise's identity.
More than a string of wins and losses, the first season was about building a culture: a new downtown arena, a distinctive blue-and-red identity rooted in Ohio's 19th-century militia heritage, and a fan base that had waited decades for hockey to come home. The roster was a patchwork of call-ups, draft picks, and experienced veterans brought in to give the young club a competitive frame, and every game carried the weight of 'firsts' that fans still reference today.
- Inaugural season
- 2000–01
- Home city
- Columbus, Ohio
- Conference
- Eastern Conference
- First head coach
- Scott Salmon
- Home arena
- Nationwide Arena (downtown Columbus)
- Franchise approval by NHL
- 1997
- Team name origin
- 19th-century Ohio 'Blue Jackets' militia regiment
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 ownership group that assembled the Blue Jackets drew on that existing sports infrastructure, and the decision to site the team in a brand-new downtown arena (which opened in 1999) 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. Scott Salmon 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.
In Their Own Story
The October night the first puck dropped at the new downtown arena, the air smelled of fresh paint and cold concrete. A few hundred empty seats still glistened under the arena lights, but the rest of the building was a wall of blue and red, the kind of noise that vibrates in your sternum before you even hear the words. A young forward, still adjusting to the speed of NHL traffic, took a wrist shot from the slot and the puck whispered past the goalie's glove. The crowd didn't just cheer—they roared, the sound bouncing off the new upper deck and rolling out through the open doors onto the parking lot where a few hundred more fans had gathered on the asphalt. Somewhere in the third row, a man in a faded Crew jersey pulled a brand-new Blue Jackets cap from a paper bag and set it on his head, and for a long moment nobody in that section moved. The season was just beginning, and the city had already decided it was home.
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 team's ownership group was connected to the existing Columbus Crew MLS franchise, meaning the city's professional sports ecosystem was built around a shared downtown identity from the start.
- The downtown arena that hosted the inaugural season had opened only the previous year, making the Blue Jackets effectively the arena's first marquee tenant and shaping the building's identity around hockey.
- The franchise was formally approved by the NHL in 1997, meaning the 2000–01 season was the culmination of roughly three years of planning, arena construction, and roster-building before the first game was played.