Rick Nash Franchise All-Time Goals Record

Lore & Background

When the Blue Jackets took the first pick in 2004, the organization had just four seasons of existence and a fanbase still figuring out whether this team was real. Nash arrived in Columbus as a teenager, a kid from the Maritimes who had already been playing in the NHL-adjacent world of the OHL and had the kind of physical frame that made opposing defensemen check their shoulder pads before the faceoff. From the start, his game was a contradiction that fans loved: a brawler's body wrapped around a scorer's hands. He would shoulder-check a guy into the boards, then, on the very next possession, bury a wrist shot from the slot with the same casual confidence.

The 2009-10 season crystallized everything. Nash, now a veteran, carried the offensive load alongside a young core and helped drag Columbus to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in franchise history. The loss to Chicago stung, but the journey validated the era. For the next several years, Nash's goal total climbed steadily, and the fans at Nationwide Arena learned to count his markers the way a congregation counts hymns—each one a small confirmation that the team was still alive, still dangerous, still theirs. When he was eventually traded to the New York Islanders in 2018, the silence in the building was its own kind of eulogy.

Nash's record endures because it is inseparable from the Blue Jackets' identity. Every young winger who laces up in Columbus since 2018 has inherited, whether he wanted to or not, the shadow of that 87 on the back of a jersey. The record is not just a stat; it is the measure of the franchise's first true golden age, the period when the Blue Jackets were not a rebuilding project but a team that could make you believe in a Cup banner.

In Their Own Story

The arena is empty except for the sound of skates carving into fresh ice. The boards glow under the halogen floodlights, and the Zamboni has long since gone home. A single puck sits at center ice, slightly blue with the residue of a hundred faceoffs. You can still smell the rubber, the cold metal of the goal frame, the faint sweetness of the ice shavings that drift off the surface like snow in a room with no windows.

You close your eyes and you can hear it: the roar of 19,000 people, the specific staccato of a stick tapping the ice in a faceoff circle, the wet crack of a puck hitting the post and bouncing back into the slot. And then the sound you will never forget—the soft, almost muffled *thwip* of a wrist shot, the puck traveling three feet above the ice, the net rippling, and the building detonating. Number 87, skating away with his stick raised, not celebrating, just acknowledging. Because for him, it was just another Tuesday. For the fans in the upper deck, it was the whole season distilled into two seconds of white light and noise.

The ice is quiet now. The puck is still there. It always is.

Reader's Guide

The Achievement Rick Nash holds the Columbus Blue Jackets franchise record for most regular-season goals, a mark he built over fourteen seasons (2004-05 through 2017-18) at Nationwide Arena. As the #1 overall pick in the 2004 NHL Draft, Nash was the organization's first true star and its offensive anchor for the better part of a decade and a half. His total of over 300 career goals for Columbus remains the highest in club history and has not been surpassed.

When It Happened The record was not a single explosive season but a slow, grinding accumulation. Nash's goal totals fluctuated year to year—some seasons he crossed 20, others he hovered in the mid-teens—but the cumulative total climbed relentlessly. By the time he was traded to the New York Islanders ahead of the 2018-19 season, the number was locked in as a franchise benchmark.

Why It Matters In a franchise that began play in 2000 and spent its early years in a competitive wilderness, Nash's record represents the offensive high-water mark of the Blue Jackets' first era. It is the standard against which every forward who has worn the blue-and-silver crest since 2018 is implicitly measured. For fans who were there from the 2004 draft night forward, the number is not abstract; it is the sum of every season they sat in the stands and watched a 230-pound kid bury pucks into the top corner with the same look on his face as if he were shooting at a target in a backyard in Nova Scotia. It is, in the most literal sense, the goal total of the Blue Jackets' coming-of-age.

Did You Know?

• Rick Nash was selected first overall in the 2004 NHL Draft, making him the highest-drafted player in Blue Jackets history and the first player the franchise ever selected in the NHL Draft.
• Nash was a key member of the 2009-10 Blue Jackets team that reached the Stanley Cup Final, the franchise's first and only appearance in the championship series to date.
• Nash's playing style—combining 230+ pounds of physicality with elite goal-scoring hands—made him one of the most dangerous power-forward types in the league during the 2010s, and his goal record reflects that blend of st
• After his tenure in Columbus ended with his 2018 trade to the New York Islanders, Nash's goal total has stood as the franchise record, a mark that has not been broken in the years since.