Each month during our 20th anniversary celebration, BlueJackets.com will look back at a memorable moment in franchise history from that month with our Game of the Month feature. The series begins today with the start of the 2010 season, when Columbus traveled to Stockholm, Sweden, to take on San Jose in a pair of games as part of the NHL Premiere to kick off the season Oct. 8-9, 2010.
The Blue Jackets staggered into the Ericsson Globe the afternoon of Oct. 3, 2010, half a world away from their home base in Ohio's capital city, and could have been excused if they didn't know where they were.
Mere hours earlier, the Blue Jackets played a preseason game -- their third in three days -- against the Atlanta Thrashers in Nationwide Arena. Immediately afterward, they boarded a plane for Stockholm, Sweden, where they would open the season Oct. 8 against the San Jose Sharks as part of the NHL's yearly overseas kickoff.

It was a memorable moment in franchise history, but the arrival was a little tough. New head coach Scott Arniel scheduled a light practice in the Globe -- the world's largest spherical building, located in the heart of the Swedish capital -- upon arrival in an effort to get the blood flowing.
The team didn't even put on full gear -- still wet from sweat from the game against the Trashers, it might have been frozen in the cargo hold after the transatlantic flight -- in the short session designed to get the legs moving.
"I don't know what day it is or what time it is," right wing Jared Boll told the Columbus Dispatch after the practice. "I won't figure that out until I go back to the hotel and lay down and get my life back together."
It turned out to be a fruitful experience for Arniel and the Blue Jackets, who dropped the opener to the Sharks but then rebounded to capture the second game in overtime. The trip served as momentum for a squad that got off to a red-hot start under its new coach, a 14-6-0 beginning that would vault the team to the top of the standings.

The on-ice success wouldn't last that season, but the memories from a decade ago still live on for those who made the trip.
"I remember it just being such an enjoyable trip," forward R.J. Umberger recently told BlueJackets.com. "Before it happened you weren't sure -- do you want to spend that much time away to start the season? But we had such a good time. To spend that amount of time together on a long road trip to a new area and gain new experiences, it really helped us get off to a really good start that year. We just had a great time overall."
It also seems fitting to look back now to an exciting kick off to the team's 10th anniversary celebration, as that Blue Jackets team entered a milestone campaign just as this year's team will do as Columbus celebrates its 20th anniversary season in 2020-21.
In addition, the Blue Jackets would be in Europe again right now had the coronavirus pandemic not struck. Columbus was scheduled to play a pair of games against the Colorado Avalanche in Helsinki, Finland, during the 2020-21 campaign, games that have been pushed back much like the season in general.

A big adventure

Tim LeRoy has been the Blue Jackets equipment manager since the team's inception in 2000. In that time, two events stick out in his head as far as mammoth undertakings to make sure the Blue Jackets had what they needed equipment-wise to get the job done.
The biggest challenge he's faced in his career took place this summer when Columbus went to Toronto to take part in the league's postseason bubble. With the Blue Jackets looking at the possibility of playing games in the hub cities for upwards of two months, and with teams generally unable to share equipment tools because of the pandemic, Columbus had to take everything it could to Toronto, with nearly five tons of gear and supplies accompanying the team across the border.
But his first unique assignment came in 2010 when Columbus headed to Sweden for the NHL Premiere. Traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to a different continent meant LeRoy and his crew had to pack like they never had before.
After all, transporting everything an NHL team needs across an ocean is no easy task.
"If you needed something, there was no idea how you'd get it, so we had to pack so much extra stuff -- sticks, laundry, practice jerseys, everything," LeRoy said. "You don't know what you're getting into."
While it was a unique challenge for LeRoy, the team's three Swedish players -- forwards Samuel Pahlsson (a native of Ånge, Sweden) and Kristian Huselius (Österhaninge, just south of Stockholm) as well as defenseman Anton Stralman (Tibro) -- were excited to show off their home country.
The NHL is the best league in the world, a place many Europeans dream of playing to measure their skills against the top players on the planet. But for players from countries like Sweden, that means moving away from their families and their home countries for months at a time each season.
Whereas a player from Canada or the United States might get the chance to return to somewhere near his hometown each season as the Blue Jackets travel, that opportunity is rarely afforded to European players, so the Swedish Blue Jackets said they were excited to have the chance to head to their homelands.
"When you come to North America, you understand that's how it's going to be," Huselius told The Dispatch. "You never dream there would come a day when you play a game in your country, in your hometown."
"It's nice for a change," Pahlsson told The Dispatch. "I've always been the one who's being shown around, I'm the one who always needed the help. This is fun."
There was one note of concern, however, as the Blue Jackets headed to Sweden. Despite little history of terror threats, the host country raised its terrorism alert level from "low" to "elevated" the Friday before the team arrived.
The list of activities included a night at the harness races, a particular pastime Huselius was fond of, and a team dirt-track racing event that resembled a go-kart outing. There was also plenty of time for the team to explore Stockholm, a city of more than a million residents whose history stretches back to the 13th century and which was built across fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea on the nation's east coast.
"(Huselius) was really excited about it," Umberger remembered. "The two things that really stuck out for your team bonding exercises, so to speak, we went to a little dirt track. I don't even know wat they're called, but those little cars, those stick-shift cars, little buggies or whatever, we raced them around. For some of us, we'd never drove stick before. It was a learning experience. It was a lot of fun watching guys struggle. Some guys picked it up well. That was a cool experience.
"And then the other thing, Kristian is really big into horse racing, so he took us to a local track that he spent a lot of time at and we got the VIP treatment. We learned a lot about the horse racing over in that area of the country. It was really cool."

A Successful Trip

The Blue Jackets -- or Bläjackorna in the native parlance -- were in a bit of a transition mode, with head coach Ken Hitchcock fired midway through the previous season as a team that made a playoff appearance in 2008-09 struggled to repeat that success.
Claude Noel finished off the campaign in charge but Columbus chose not to retain the longtime NHL assistant, instead hiring Arniel, who had led the Manitoba Moose of the AHL to four straight playoff appearances and a Calder Cup Final.
The Blue Jackets boasted a similar roster from the year prior, with the top eight scorers all returning led by Rick Nash, who was coming off a 33-goal, 67-point season. The forward group included veterans like Umberger, Huselius and Antoine Vermette as well as young talent like Jakub Voracek, Derick Brassard and 2008 first-round pick Nikita Filatov. Stralman, Fedor Tyutin, Jan Hejda, Mike Commodore and Rostislav Klesla led a blue line that was going to be charged with pushing the pace offensively in stark contrast to Hitchcock's style.
"We want to take calculated risks," Arniel told The Dispatch. "We don't want our guys making reckless decisions, but if we can support the puck up the ice with our defensemen, it puts a lot more pressure on the opposition.
"We have guys who can do it."
Things got off to a good start Oct. 5 as the team took a Tuesday trip for a final exhibition game vs. Malmö, a second division team located on the west coast of Sweden in the nation's third most populous city, just a bridge ride across the Öresund from Copenhagen, Denmark. Columbus had little trouble with the Redhawks, earning a 4-1 victory in a game marred by potential injuries, as Klesla took a nasty spill into the boards and defenseman Kris Russell tweaked a troublesome right knee.
Klesla would be fine by the opener Oct. 8, but Russell would not be, missing the first game against a Sharks team that made the Western Conference Finals the year before and was led by such names as Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Joe Pavelski, Dany Heatley, Ryane Clowe, Logan Couture and Dan Boyle, all of whom would top 50 points on the year.
The Sharks showed their strength in the opening game, beginning with a pair of goals in the first 11 minutes to take a 2-0 lead in front of 11,324 in the Ericsson Globe. Torrey Mitchell started the scoring just 2:11 into the game, bringing the puck out from behind the net and stuffing it through the pads of CBJ goaltender Steve Mason. Thornton made it 2-0 at the 10:57 mark, skating into the zone and blowing a shot past the blocker of Mason.
But just as quickly as San Jose led, Columbus battled back. Huselius celebrated his return to Sweden by scoring the team's first goal of the season on the power play at 16:55 of the first, taking a cross-crease feed from Filatov at the back door and beating Antti Niemi past the glove. Fifteen seconds later, Umberger made it a 2-2 game, as Pahlsson stripped Marc-Edouard Vlasic as he tried to leave the Sharks defensive zone, then Ethan Moreau took the puck to the net and Umberger deposited the rebound past Niemi.
The penalty-filled game -- Columbus had seven power plays, while the Sharks had six -- was decided with 9:45 to go with Commodore in the box. Late in the power play, Couture took a pass in the middle of the ice, curled into the left circle and fired through Mason with Devon Setoguchi setting a screen.

"It was pretty obvious we were nervous," Arniel said postgame. "We looked a bit scrambly out there at times. It took us 10 minutes to settle down."
Russell returned to the lineup for the second game Oct. 9 in place of Jared Boll, who tweaked his back in the opener and played just 48 seconds. That meant Columbus skated with seven defensemen in the contest.
And just like in the opener, the Blue Jackets would have to play from behind in front of a crowd of 9,537 in the Globe. Just 2:02 into the game, Setoguchi scored on the power play, beating Mason past the blocker with a shot from the slot. But Columbus needed little time to answer, as Nash made it 1-1 at 3:13 when he fired from an impossible angle low on the right and somehow snuck the puck through the pads of Antero Nittymaki and barely across the line.
After a scoreless second, Huselius made it a two-point night and scored his second power-play goal of the series 5:07 into the third, tallying on a nearly identical play to the opener. Filatov again fired a pass across the ice from left to right to Huselius, who corralled the puck and fired past the blocker of Nittymaki.
But the Sharks wouldn't go quietly, making it 2-2 with 12:55 to go with a second power-play goal on the night. Marleau, Heatley and Thornton completed a nice tic-tac-toe passing move with Heatley finding Thornton crashing down the left wing, and Thornton quickly ripped a shot past Mason to tie the score.
That led to 4-on-4 overtime and a bit of redemption for Moreau, who took a pair of penalties on the night. Pahlsson rubbed Heatley off the puck in the neutral zone, giving the puck to Tyutin with speed. The defenseman quickly fed Moreau into the zone on a 2-on-1, and the offseason acquisition fired a shot that ticked off the glove of Nittymaki and went into the net.
The Blue Jackets poured off the bench to celebrate, while Arniel sported a wide smile on his face after his first career head coaching win.
"Coming out of this with two points is huge," Stralman said after the game. "And it makes this night in Sweden our best night in Sweden."
As Columbus flew back across the Atlantic, momentum followed. The Blue Jackets started hot under Arniel, improving to 6-4-0 by the end of October and 14-6-0 with a win over the Islanders on the night before Thanksgiving to tie Detroit atop the Western Conference standings.
"At that time, San Jose was one of the best teams in the league," Umberger says now, looking back. "They were big games. We came away with a split and I think we were feeling really good about ourselves, that we were able to play with one of the best teams in the league. I think it definitely gave us confidence moving forward going back home."
Sadly, it wouldn't last. Columbus went 3-9-3 in its next 15 contests, kicking off a topsy-turvy 10th anniversary season that countered long winning runs with seemingly endless losing streaks. By the end of the season, the Blue Jackets had won just three of their last 22 games, ending the year 34-35-13 and in last place in the Central Division.