'He's Fearless'

NEWARK - Before children, the championships, and the chart-topping point production, Blake Coleman had to prove himself like all the rest with a dream.

Except, he wasn’t your typical bright-eyed and bushy tailed young greenhorn.

It took almost no time at all for Travis Zajac and the New Jersey Devils to see this young buck was built differently than most. 

So, when reminded of Coleman’s blistering offensive yield – eight years into his career, no less – it was hardly a shocker.

“I'm not surprised, to be honest,” said Zajac, the recently retired Devils legend, who helped Coleman cut his teeth as a National Leaguer. “Sometimes you get put in that role where he won some Cups as a grinding, third-line, wear-teams-out-kind of player. But he still scored big goals for Tampa, right?

“Now, you get on those streaks and the puck starts finding you and you play with a little more confidence.

“But I’m not surprised by it. 

“I think he's always had that knack. … He goes to the tough areas, he can turn pucks over, he can create with his speed. And he's fearless. He can get to all those dirty areas to score goals and he's got a great shot where he can score from outside the paint, too.”

And Zajac would know.

The two played parts of four seasons together, beginning with Coleman’s official NHL launch-point on Jan. 12, 2017 – a night when the veteran of more than 1,000 big-league showings netted the game’s opening goal. 

From that point forward, the pair fashioned something of an iron-clad bond, with Coleman – 24 – absorbing all he could from his 32-year-old wingman. In time, their off-ice connection would transcend the dressing-room walls and two quickly became one of the game’s great penalty-killing duos, much like how Coleman and Yegor Sharangovich have become for the Flames today. 

But that, too, is of no surprise to Zajac.

Not with the kind of person he was, the leadership qualities he showed, and the ever-present desire to give back and unite everyone as part of a team’s family unit.

Coleman, now 32 himself, has taken upon himself to bring Sharangovich under his wing – offering, on the eve of his 500th career spin: "I think when you care about somebody, instinctively, you play better, you care, and you play for that guy. 'Sharky' reminds me a lot of myself when I was that age.”

Those are the values that were instilled in him, thanks in large part to Zajac’s immaculate influence.

“I felt he really cared about me and vice-versa,” Coleman added. “I learned a lot from him my early years in Jersey.

“Not that Sharky's a super young guy, but he's new enough that he's kind of in that same role and it feels good to play the other side of it.”

In sports, we ramble incessantly about ‘culture’ and what that really means – yes, under a team dynamic – but also under the scrutiny of a high-stakes and professional sports setting like this. 

Players like Coleman don’t talk about it. 

They just ‘get it.’

They are the culture because they, themselves, are the unifiers, the harmonizers, and those that pledge to teach others what their mentors instilled in them. 

“There were guys who looked out for me when I first joined the Devils like John Madden, Jay Pandolfo, Jamie Langenbrunner, Patrik Elias,” Zajac recalled. “You need help along the way as a young guy. You need to learn, you need to grow, and I think you learn from your experiences. 

“As I got older and older, experience helped me pass along to some of the younger guys like Blake and I'm sure like Blake is doing right now with Yegor.

“It's part of it.

“You want to help the young guys and mold them and make sure they're growing, enjoying the game and reaching their potential.

“And I know Blake is doing a great job of that in Calgary.”

Naturally, none of this carries any substance without real, tangible, results between the boards, too.

But now that Coleman is approaching his career high in goals (20), already passed it in points (40), and has played a role in more shorthanded goals (7) than the Flames’ four-man crew has given up while he’s on the ice (6), it’s fair to say both boxes are checked.

It’s clear that we’re seeing from the ‘Texas Tiger’ this year is no outlier.

He’s literally spent years training for this.

Take, for example, the fall of 2017 through the 2019-20 season, when the numbers gave us an early indication of what was to come with the Flames. With Coleman and Zajac on the ice together, the Devils' PK had an expected goals-for rate of 21.01% in over 340 minutes of shorthanded ice time.

Without them, the scale dropped to 18.54% in a shade under 500 minutes.

Those early years with the Devils were the proverbial canary in the ‘Cole’ mine – and Zajac got a front-row seat to it all, as Coleman was quickly ripening into the player we see today.

“He plays the right way and he doesn’t cheat the game,” Zajac said. “With Colesy, you know what you're getting from him every night. He's going to have a work ethic, he's going to compete, he's going to be tenacious. He's going to do all the little things to help a team win. So, for me, personally, those are always the guys you want to play with. Every shift, every game, you know what you're getting. You can rely on him in any situation – and that's how chemistry kind of starts.

“We played a similar style back then. He's very tenacious with the puck, he's aggressive - he's got that dog-on-a-bone mentality where as a defensive player, he was easy to read off of. He was a younger player, he wanted to learn, and he was a great teammate and easy to be around.

“It's nice when good people are able to do good things like him.”