COLUMBUS, Ohio — This game has been circled on the Columbus Blue Jackets’ calendar for a while now, and not because it’s the (mostly) annual New Year’s Eve game in Nationwide Arena.

When the Blue Jackets last faced the New Jersey Devils, an unexpectedly chaotic game played out on Dec. 1 in Newark, N.J., with the Blue Jackets coming from behind to win 5-3 and the two clubs combining for four fights, 21 penalties and 74 penalty minutes.

It felt like a flashback to an earlier time in the NHL, when fight-filled games weren’t such an anomaly.

What drew the Blue Jackets’ ire, however, were postgame comments from New Jersey coach Sheldon Keefe, who accused Columbus forwards Dmitri Voronkov and Adam Fantilli of jumping Brenden Dillon and Jonas Siegenthaler, respectively, before the two Devils were expecting to fight.

“(Dillon) would never do something like that to another player, that I know for certain,” Keefe said of the fight that touched off the night, when a net-front scrum at 1:01 of the second period turned into a fight between Voronkov and Dillon.

He also took issue with Fantilli a few minutes later in the game, when Siegenthaler skated after Fantilli and ended up getting punched five or six times before he started to return fire. That, too, Keefe thought, was out of line.

Evason was miffed. He read Keefe’s comments as questioning the integrity of his players. Two days later, when the Blue Jackets returned to practice, Evason said: “(Keefe) has no bearing on what happens in our room.” Later, he added: “We don’t put a lot of stock in it.”

Most who have followed the NHL for any number of years will know that tonight’s game could be a Part II for these two Metropolitan Division clubs. But it could also be a big nothing, with no resemblance to the game played in Prudential Center.

What’s interesting, however, is how different the Blue Jackets will align tonight, and how much better equipped they are to both instigate and participate in a game that’s full of fights and scrums and finished checks, should New Jersey care to engage.

For one, right winger Mathieu Olivier, who is widely considered the reigning heavyweight fighter in the game, returned from an upper-body injury two games ago. He missed the Dec. 1 game, but should be rested and ready after fighting Ottawa’s Kurtis MacDermid on Monday.

Also, the Blue Jackets acquired winger Mason Marchment earlier this month in a trade with the Seattle Kraken, adding more size (6-foot-5, 212 pounds) and sandpaper to the lineup.

Marchment has matched a franchise record with a four-game point streak to start his Blue Jackets’ career, but something else has been made clear. Don Waddell has studied him closely through the years — he tried to sign him as a free agent in Carolina two years ago — and felt the Blue Jackets could use his gifts of agitation.

One of Waddell’s aims since he arrived in Columbus two years ago was to make the Blue Jackets a bigger club, and he’s succeeded. The ideal top nine, when healthy, averages just under 6-3, one of the biggest units in the NHL.