Michael Chaput’s helmet represents little-known ‘Clumbus’ hockey club

The Columbus Blue Jackets bumped a five-game losing skid on Saturday night, beating the New York Islanders 5-2 in a win that was pretty close to error-free.

Again, that's pretty close. There were some defensive miscues, and Columbus let the Islanders hang around a little longer than they should have.

Plus the decal on Michael Chaput's helmet read "Clumbus".

(Alternate silly opening: The Columbus Blue Jackets scored more than two goals for the first time in five games Saturday night, overcoming some serious concerns about their O. But those concerns are not gone -- it would appear they have shifted to whoever applies the decals to their helmets. I think I made the right choice. I digress.)

"Clumbus" is not, I remind you, the name of the city in which the Blue Jackets play. Nor is it the affection nickname they've earned on Twitter. That's #Lumbus. One letter too many here. (Thinking about it, maybe the typo here isn't that the "O" is missing, but that the "C" isn't a hashtag?)

This is the danger of the Blue Jackets' third uniform. It's one of my favourite alternates in the NHL (I've gone on record as saying Columbus should just wear them full-time) but unlike their regular home helmet, which has only tough-to-misspell pictures, the third helmet has words.

That means it calls for spelling. And spelling, like rocking a rhyme, especially a rhyme that's right on time, can be tricky, tricky, tricky.

There are, of course, other explanations. It's possible the decal was correct when it was applied but Chaput made the helmet smaller, making the 'O' disappear. (If so, still funny.)

Update: Yep. A true team player and apparently the owner of a small cranium, Chaput took to the Twitters Sunday morning to bail out his team's equipment managers by taking full responsibility for "Clumbus":

I still prefer my alternate explanation: the Blue Jackets did it on purpose as a subtle, belated act of solidarity for their former division rivals in Nashville. You know, the Perds?

s/t to Union & Blue.