Blake Coleman

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

30 goals and 24 assists in 78 games — 54 points at 17:08 a night, plus-19, with 3 power-play goals, 4 shorthanded goals and 7 game-winners on 191 shots, converting at 15.71 per cent, and 76 penalty minutes. A career high in goals at 32.

Plus-nineteen on a club that finished twenty-third, and 51.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,121 minutes, the 62nd percentile. His ice went 47-46 against an expectation of 48.82-46.54.

The Finesse Game

191 attempts at a median of 21 feet, with 49 per cent from inside 20 and 23 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 15.71 per cent against a career 10.38.

He goes to the net and he scores from the paint, and thirty goals from a checking winger is the product of shot selection and a very good year rather than a change of player.

24 assists. He does not create and he is not asked to — the job is to forecheck, kill penalties and finish what arrives.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 199, and he forechecks harder than anybody on this roster. He closes on a defenceman faster than a man that size should and he finishes every check.

431 penalty minutes in 542 games, and 76 in 78 last season. He retaliates and he plays on the edge deliberately.

The skating is the top end of the club and it is what makes both the forecheck and the penalty kill work.

The Intangibles

Seventy-fifth overall in 2011 by New Jersey, out of Miami of Ohio, and 542 games and 251 points at 32 with two Stanley Cups in Tampa and a career plus-40.

Seventeen career shorthanded goals in 542 games is the trait that defines him — he reads the pass before it is made and he is gone. On a club that has traded its goaltender and half its blue line, he is the man the room is built around.