Oh, what a night in the Arena District
Summoning magic and French-kissed by fortune
Twenty-six years ago, in September of 1999, I moved to Columbus to be the first Blue Jackets beat writer for The Columbus Dispatch. One of the first interviews I did was with Brian Ellis, president and COO of Nationwide Reality Investors. He took me on a tour of Nationwide Arena at a time when the building was about half-built. The walls weren't up yet. We wore hardhats.
Twenty-six years later, there are nights in the Arena District like Saturday night.
Four Original Jackets were in town to kick off the team's season-long, 25th-anniversary celebration: Kevin Dineen, Rostislav Klesla and Ron Tugnutt together dropped the ceremonial first puck and Dave King, still whippersnappin' at age 77, lit the fuse on the cannon. The Jackets, dreadful in a home loss to Colorado two days previous, rediscovered their game and posted a come-from-behind, 3-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning before a crowd of 15,822.
I was at Nationwide to interview the Originals during the morning/afternoon. Then, I headed over to the new Crew stadium to see if the Black & Gold could summon any magic on what could've been the last home game for Darlington Nagbe, one of the best players in franchise history and one of the best holding midfielders that Major League Soccer has ever seen. The Crew not only summoned magic, they were French-kissed by fortune. Even Daniel Gazdag scored.
The Crew beat the New York Red Bulls 3-1 before a crowd of 20,736. Meanwhile, in Toronto, the FCs put a 4-1 lashing on Orlando City and, in New England, the Revolution played to a 2-2 draw with the Chicago Fire. The fallout from these Decision Day fireworks: The Crew moved from ninth place in the East to seventh, thus averting a Wednesday play-in game (which could've been on the road) – and setting up what a potentially epic, first-round series against their archrivals.
It'll be the Crew versus the No. 2-seed FC Cincinnatis in a best-of-three. Hell is Real, playoff style. Columbus and Porkopolis fans remember the last time that happened. Beautiful. Mayhap, the path to the MLS Cup final will once again run through Columbus, as is did in 2023, when the Crew won it all, and in 2024, when the Red Bulls upset the Crew in the first round and made it all the way to the ultimate stage of the playoffs and lost to the LA Galaxy.
"Obviously, we're happy to not be in the play-in game," goalkeeper Patrick Schulte said. "Now, we have a rivalry in the first round. Crazy."
Darlington Nagbe, perhaps the best holding midfielder in MLS history, who will retire after this season, was honored after the Crew's final regular-season game of the season Saturday night. The place was electric.
Neither the Red Bulls (10th in the East) nor the Galaxy (14th in the West) qualified for the playoffs this year. That's worth mentioning as a way of pointing out that MLS, for all of its big-market skew, still has a parity-toughness to it. The Eastern Conference this year was a beast – as opposed to the West, where Austin finished in sixth place with seven fewer points than the Crew. (Idle thought: Isn't it past time for the league, the Crew and that team down south to stop dodging a regular-season matchup? What are they waiting for, replacement content after Lionel Messi's retires? Jimmy Haslam can move the Austin game to Cleveland or Brook Park or Chattanooga to avert the triggering of Anthony Precourt, or his pets. Nagbe would come out of retirement for that one. Just get it done. But I digress.)
Michael Arace
The Crew (14-8-12, 54 points) have posted their third-best regular season, points-wise, since the league went to a 34-game schedule in 2011. It was only surpassed by Wilfried Nancy's first two seasons, which came with an MLS Cup, a Leagues Cup and a passel of franchise records. Comparatively, this season has been frustrating. Nancy has talked much about "adversity" (meaning injuries, not an insignificant factor here) while he and GM Issa Tall have shrugged off the sale of Cucho Hernandez, Christian Ramirez, et al. Gazdag, an expensive acquisition, hasn't produced to his price tag. The newest DP, striker Wessam Abou Ali, was just getting warmed up when he fractured his ankle.
One point of contention among fans has been the unused international roster spot the Crew bought in February. Why not fill it? Nancy has talked about it. The answer is nuanced. From what I've been told, the international slot was seen by the organization as flexibility to acquire a player after the summer window closed – and there were forays in that direction – or to save a place for a Crew 2 player to matriculate to the major leagues. In the end, Nancy, perhaps showing his Gallic pride, decided to stick with his roster and Tall agreed. Make of that what you will. The Crew won 14 games and surpassed the 50-point mark, which the brain trust sees as a victory under the "adverse" circumstances. It's a fair point.
"We wanted to finish higher for sure because this is all the time try to win how many games are possible, but I really like the consistency that we had knowing that it's been a bit difficult at certain moments," Nancy said. "I really enjoyed the fact that we were close together, and we find all the time a way, when we suffer, we suffer and sometimes we took a big slap, but we didn't quit. I'm really, really happy about this because like I said tonight we finished seventh. We wanted to do more, but we finished seventh because we didn't quit. For me, this is so important.”
Clockwise from top left: Old geezer Dave King; Rusty Klesla, Ronald Tugnutt and Kevin Dineen talking about Darren Van Impe, Klesla, who is not a geezer, Nationwide Arena, which is not a geezer, Dineen, Tugger.
I hoped to write more about the Blue Jackets in this space but it's last call at Local Cantina and I don't have time to run through the reams of material that was collected over the last couple of days. I'll be processing that stuff and returning to it in future posts, this week and (there's so much) beyond. Three things for now:
- The Jackets came out of the gate playing well – they could've been 3-1 instead of 1-3 through their first four games. Even their goaltending has been very good (although their special teams have been horrific). They laid a stink bomb at home against the Colorado Avalanche at home on Thursday night – and then came back with what was, from what my correspondents tell me, a stellar performance in their victory over the Lightning Saturday night. In this sense, they are not unlike the Crew – they've gotten back to their game before it wholly slipped their grasp. It's a positive sign. "Did we do anything as a staff yesterday to engage them and make aware (of a lack of 'compete')? Yeah. But they're accountable, which is what we want, right? It's one thing for coaches to talk, but it's another thing for them to be accountable. And they did that."
- Nationwide Arena remains one of the most beautiful facilities in the NHL. Huntington Park is spectacular. So is the new Crew stadium. And on a mid-October night with the temperature hovering around 70 degrees, the Arena District pulsed with energy. There was a No Kings rally at Capitol Square. Athletes who were in town for the Columbus Marathon (which went off Sunday morning) were traversing Downtown. The Crew found some magic and the Jackets rediscovered themselves, both teams playing within a half mile of the other. I took pause to reflect on what has happened during my quarter century as a sportswriter covering these teams. The Jackets have, for all practical purposes, done little to draw fans over this span – and the fans keep coming. They tried to move the Crew – and they keep winning. This is one of America's great cities, it's a vibrant sports town and the weekend was testament.
- Along these lines, here's the last word from Tugnutt: "You know, when we first showed up, there was a rink just sitting there by itself and not much around it. And I said, 'Wow, this is new.' It almost felt like we were spoils coming in. Classy organization. They were so good to the family. Everyone was just so nice. They're still like that at the rink. I remember Mr. McConnell (founding owner John H. McConnell, RIP) would come in and say, 'Ron, how's your family? Do you need anything?' The owner of the team. And you're just like, 'Wow, that doesn't happen everywhere.' I'll tell you that Columbus is getting the reputation of being a fantastic place (among NHL players), especially if you have a family. And this team right now, I really like them. A lot of people are saying a lot of good things about the way they play, the speed they play with, and the entertainment value they bring to it. There are teams in the NHL that can't make it through the first period without falling asleep."
- Nagbe will get at least one more home game. Here's the schedule for the Round One, best-of-three series between the Crew and the Cincinnatis:
Game 1 – Monday, Oct. 27, TQL Stadium in Cincinnati, 6:55 p.m. kickoff.
Game 2 – Sunday, Nov. 2, Lower.com Field, CBus, 6:42 kickoff.
Game 3 (if necessary) – Saturday, Nov. 8, TQL Stadium, time TBD.
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Michael Arace
