Welcome to the 12th Game Day Fire Drill, for this, Calgary’s 60th game of the season on Feb. 24, 2009.

A lot of people I know are clueless as to why the Blue Jackets, perhaps the most ridiculously-named team in all of sports, rock their silly, silly name.

As a person who minored in American History in college, I will tell you: Ohio was one of the craziest states when it came to fighting for the Union in the American Civil War.

Fact 1: Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman (the guy that instituted a scorched earth policy in his campaign that marched from Georgia’s border with Tennessee to the Atlantic Ocean and then up to Virginia through the Carolinas, burning everything usable, military or otherwise, they ran across. So badass.) are from Ohio. So, too, was General George Custer, but it’s best for Ohio’s sake to leave that name out of it.

Fact 2: Abraham Lincoln requested that the state raise 10 battalions (or whatever), and Ohio more than doubled that number. Because they’re bad dudes, and not afraid of a bunch of hick rebels from South Carolina.

Fact 3: Ohio was home to several large forts near its border that housed Union soldiers and provided easy access to the detestable secessionists.

Fact 4: Many, many Union uniforms were manufactured in and around Columbus. And the Union army, of course, wore blue.

These facts are also why Columbus has that cool cannon in its arena.

That’s all I know about Columbus’ involvement in the Civil War though. Go read a book about it or something.

The Calgary Flames (34-18-6 for 74 points. Tied for third in the West, first in the Northwest) and the Columbus Blue Jackets (30-24-6 for 66 points. Sixth in the West, third in the Central)

7 p.m. Mountain time and 9 p.m. Eastern time. All other time zones really need to see this ridiculous Juninho free kick from earlier today against Barcelona.

Pengrowth Saddledome, Calgary, Alberta.

Calgary is 20-7-4 at home this year, but lost its only home game in the last two weeks to Vancouver last Thursday. Columbus, meanwhile, is below .500 on the road, going 11-14-4, but have won their last two games away from Columbus. The Flames have yet to defeat the Beejes in regulation this year, winning 5-4 in a shootout just over a month ago and losing 4-1 in early November.

(Here’s the thing: there is actually very little to hate about Columbus. Seriously, they’re a fun team to watch with a lot of good players with great personalities. I actually don’t even dislike the Blue Jackets. With that said, we’ll continue.)

Ken Hitchcock’s fat neck/several chins — Agh! 

They’re good — Mike Commodore? Good. Rick Nash? Good. Steve Mason? Gooooooood.

Kristian Huselius — Is he still lazy? I bet he’s still lazy.

They screwed my no-drop money pool — No-drop means I can’t drop anyone. I’m stuck with the 14 guys I drafted at the beginning of the year. RJ Umberger has only 33 points despite having 20 goals already since he has NO ONE TO PASS TO! And they keep calling up Nikita Filatov for like two days before sending him back down. Just long enough to score FOUR GOALS IN EIGHT GAMES! God! He was supposed to be my sleeper 13th-round rookie! These front office guys are KILLING MEEEEEE.

They’ve never made the playoffs — Only NHL team to never do it, either. Losers.

They are surprisingly good against the Flames in Calgary — They’ve taken points in their last two games in Calgary and are .500 there since the start of last season. Booooo.

Because you don’t want any more history lessons. Enjoy the game and let me know if you want to know about the second Battle of Bull Run in the comments section!