My first NHL goal: Rick Nash

Scoring a goal at the NHL level is the dream of every young hockey player growing up. It's a memory that lasts forever, the culmination of a lifetime of hard work.

Usually, players are asked about what it feels like at the time they score the goal, then while the memory lives on in the player, the story sort of fades away. Until now.

BlueJackets.com is catching up with members of the CBJ universe to get their memories of their first NHL goals.

It could have been a jinx.

Rick Nash remembers coming off the ice after practice the day before his NHL debut for the Blue Jackets in the 2002-03 season opener and being shown a list of No. 1 overall picks who had scored in their NHL debuts.

No pressure, eh?

"They named off the list of former first overall picks that scored in their first NHL game, and I know a few guys have done it since, but I don't think at the time the list was overly big," he says now. "I remember that."

While the debuts of top picks can go all directions -- Alex Ovechkin scored twice in his first NHL game, while Sidney Crosby was kept off the board; Connor McDavid didn't score, either, but Auston Matthews had four goals in his first game -- that conversation 18 years ago was a subtle reminder of what was expected of Nash after the Blue Jackets traded up to grab him first overall in the 2002 draft.

And then, as many CBJ fans remember, Nash delivered. Still in awe that he was getting to play his first NHL game, the 18-year-old set off delirium in a soldout Nationwide Arena when he crashed the net and scored the team's first goal of the season.

"You know what's funny?" says Nash, now special assistant to GM Jarmo Kekalainen in the CBJ front office. "For me playing 15 seasons, every single year it always seems like that first goal was always the hardest one. It's hard to get going if you go 10 or 12 games in or whatever it is without scoring, so to score that one right away, it was a nice weight off your shoulders.

"You're the first overall pick, you're supposed to bring some scoring and offense and some excitement to the game. To get that one out of the way and kind of show people that you're worthy of being the first overall pick, it was nice to get it out of the way on the first night."

Nice might be an understatement; looking back, it almost seems like the opener was drawn up in a movie studio. The Blue Jackets struggled out of the gate as an expansion team the first two years, as expected, but general manager Doug MacLean made the move to trade up from the No. 3 overall pick to No. 1 in the 2002 draft because of the possibilities he saw in Nash, a high-scoring physical standout from London of the Ontario Hockey League.

He remains the only No. 1 overall pick in team history, and as a sellout crowd -- including his parents -- filled Nationwide Arena on Oct. 10, 2002, for the season opener against the Blackhawks, it's fair to say there was plenty of curiosity how the youngster would fare.

With Chicago holding a 1-0 lead midway through the second period, Nash delivered the answer. Linemate Mike Sillinger pounced on a turnover and sent a slap shot from the right side on Chicago goalie Jocelyn Thibault, with the rebound coming out toward the slot. In one graceful, swooping motion, Nash approached the puck and tucked it between Thibault's legs before the goalie could reset himself.

Watch: Rick Nash's first NHL goal

"It was kind of like a storybook," said Nash, who took the puck to his home in Ontario after the season where it still remains. "It was an exciting night that honestly I will never forget. I still remember the puck going between the goalie's legs and then it disappearing, so I knew he either had it or it was in the net.

"The old saying, they don't ask how, they ask how many. That was one of those ones that wasn't the prettiest. You either swatted it in or it was under his pad. It took about a half second to hear the horn and the fans going crazy. It just kind of put a stamp on playing your first NHL game and that feeling of what it's like to score in the NHL."

Sillinger would go on to add a power-play goal and the Blue Jackets won the game 2-1, with Nash being named one of the game's three stars. It was an auspicious debut, though things didn't immediately get better for the franchise or Nash -- he wouldn't score again until his 13th game, a two-goal outing at the Rangers on Nov. 9, and the Jackets finished last in the Central Division as MacLean took over on the bench halfway through the season after the dismissal of head coach Dave King.

Still, it was a memorable year for Nash, who was tutored by veterans like Sillinger, Ray Whitney, Andrew Cassels, Geoff Sanderson, Kevin Dineen, Tyler Wright and Luke Richardson, among others.

"It was fun," Nash said. "It was kind of an old-school NHL back then. There were a lot of older guys. For most of the season, I played on the third line with Grant Marshall and Mike Sillinger, and Andrew Cassels lived beside me out at Easton, so he kind of took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. We had guys like Kevin Dineen, Geoff Sanderson, Tyler Wright, so it was fun. It's funny, these are guys you that you grow up watching, and the next thing you know, you're tying your skates in the stall next to them.

"It was really cool, and as I grew older, I really tried to remember how those guys treated me and taught me to be a good pro. As the younger guys came in the room whether I was in Columbus or when I got to New York, I always remembered how much respect those guys gave me as a young guy and an 18-year-old coming in who was the first overall pick. It would have been easy to pick on me, but those guys were great and they took me under their wing."

Nash would finish with 17 goals that season among 39 points, preceding a breakout the next season when he tallied 41 times to win the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy as the league's top scorer, an honor he shared with Jarome Iginla and Ilya Kovalchuk.

He'd go on to score 437 goals in 1,060 NHL games, including a franchise-record 289 wearing union blue in 674 games played with the Blue Jackets over nine seasons. Nash holds just about every franchise record there is and many of the top highlights, including "The Goal" vs. Phoenix that remains the gold standard of individual efforts in team history as well as the tally against Chicago in 2009 that clinched the franchise's first playoff bid.

Still, few stand out in Nash's head like the very first one.

"It's funny, the goals that stand out to me are the Phoenix goal, the goal against Chicago when we tied it up to get our first playoff appearance as an organization," he said. "I scored one goal against Buffalo with the Rangers that put the 'x' beside our name to make the playoffs, and then I've had a few goals internationally that stand out.

"But I'm telling you, the first goal I count on one hand as one of my best memories in hockey. You think about playing over 1,000 games and you try to remember certain goals and certain games and big moments in your career, but this moment that I'm talking about, this memory that we're talking about sits really fresh in my memory. That's how big a deal it was to score your first NHL goal."