The Columbus Blue Jackets have a new developmental team, and it's just a couple hours down the road. The organization announced a two-year agreement making the Wheeling Nailers its ECHL affiliate, starting with the upcoming season, giving Columbus a formal double-A partner for the first time since the 2022-23 season.
The deal, first reported by The Columbus Dispatch, creates a tight developmental triangle stretching from Nationwide Arena to Cleveland to Wheeling, West Virginia. Blue Jackets assistant general manager and Cleveland Monsters general manager Chris Clark said Wheeling's player development tradition and its proximity to Cleveland and Columbus will benefit the organization. The Nailers will compete in the ECHL Western Conference Central Division alongside the Cincinnati Cyclones, Toledo Walleye, Fort Wayne Komets, Indy Fuel, Bloomington Bison and Kalamazoo Wings.
The opening in Wheeling came about suddenly. The Pittsburgh Penguins had held the longest continuous NHL-ECHL affiliation in the sport, running from 1998 through this year, before terminating the 28-season partnership in July after the Hoffmann Family of Companies acquired controlling interest in the Penguins, according to TribLIVE. The new ownership group elected to align Pittsburgh instead with the Florida Everblades, an ECHL franchise the Hoffmann family already owned.
A Gap Columbus Had Been Trying to Fill
That left Wheeling searching for an NHL partner right as Columbus was trying to close a gap of its own. The Blue Jackets had gone without a dedicated ECHL affiliate since the 2022-23 season, when the team was previously linked with the Kalamazoo Wings, per Pro Hockey Rumors. That gap made Columbus one of only two NHL teams without a formal double-A partner during the 2025-26 season.
The agreement was negotiated under Don Waddell, who took over as Columbus's president of hockey operations and general manager in May 2024 after six seasons running the Carolina Hurricanes. Filling out the ECHL tier completes a developmental pipeline that already runs through the Cleveland Monsters, Columbus's AHL affiliate since 2015. The Monsters are entering their 20th season in 2026-27 off three straight Calder Cup Playoff appearances, including a North Division Finals berth this past season and a Game 7 trip to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2024.
Two Rivals Turned Teammates
There's a bit of hockey trivia buried in the new arrangement. Before the Blue Jackets existed, Columbus was home to the ECHL's Columbus Chill from 1991 to 1999, a franchise that relocated to Reading to make way for Nationwide Arena. During that stretch, the Chill and Wheeling's team were division rivals, making the two once-competing minor-league markets unlikely partners now under the same NHL organization.
Wheeling brings a strong track record to the table. The Nailers went 46-20-3-3 for 98 points in 2025-26, capturing the ECHL North Division title and reaching the Eastern Conference Finals. It's a franchise with real staying power, too: founded in 1981 as the Carolina Thunderbirds in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the club moved to West Virginia in 1992 and took the Nailers name in 1996 to honor the city's cut-nail manufacturing history, making it the oldest continuously operating minor league hockey franchise below the AHL level in North America.
Notable names have passed through Wheeling on their way up. Mark Letestu and Zenon Konopka both played for the Nailers, while current Blue Jackets forward Ryan Lomberg logged ECHL time with the Adirondack team and goalie Jet Greaves spent time with the Kalamazoo Wings before reaching Columbus.
Home Ice and the Bigger Picture
The Nailers play their home games at WesBanco Arena, a venue along the Ohio River that opened in 1977 as the Wheeling Civic Center. It seats roughly 4,700 fans for hockey following multi-million-dollar modernizations completed in 2015 and 2016. Wheeling sits about 128 miles from Columbus and 166 miles from Cleveland, a distance that the ECHL says ranks as the sixth-shortest geographic gap between any active AHL and ECHL affiliate pair in North America.
The new partnership also fits into a broader league trend. The ECHL now counts 30 member clubs for 2026-27 and continues pushing toward a 32-team target aimed at establishing full one-to-one affiliation parity with both the NHL and AHL. For Columbus, the immediate payoff is simpler: a nearby, winning ECHL club to help stock the pipeline behind a Blue Jackets roster that closed last season with a 4-3 shootout loss to the Boston Bruins at Nationwide Arena.
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