The Columbus Blue Jackets shut out the Washington Capitals 3-0 at Nationwide Center Tuesday night. A year after watching their favorite team lose to the Capitals in the first round, Blue Jackets fans were very excited about Columbus beating their divisional rival in an important regular season game.
So excited, in fact, that they started flapping their wings.
As Artemi Panarin scored an empty-net goal with nine seconds to go in regulation, NBC Sports Washington cameras turned to the lower bowl of Nationwide Arena and captured several fans doing their best imitation of Evgeny Kuznetsov’s bird celebration.
This group, standing by the Blue Jackets’ tunnel, were especially flappy.
The fans likely got the idea from a January 12 game where CBJ beat WSH 2-1 in overtime. Evgeny Kuznetsov flapped his wings after scoring the game-tying goal with a minute left in regulation. Panarin, and several of his teammates, mockingly did the celly back towards the Caps bench after they hit pay dirt in sudden death.
“That’s fine, you know,” Kuznetsov said then. “It’s nice to get some people to think about me. Same as like in April last series.”
“I didn’t see it, but I’m assuming that’s a little bitter,” Tom Wilson added. “I’ll leave it at that.”
I was at the game and every time someone got up on the scoreboard during TV timeouts they did the bird flap. It's really under their skin for some reason.
— 🤯 Michael Seans 🤯 (@MichaelSeanz) February 13, 2019
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… right?
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