Category: Sports

BERLIN, N.J. — Blake Zielinski carried the puck around the ice at Pennsauken Skate Zone in Camden County on a muggy late June day. He skated around an Edgebosshockey mini-stick, dangled and weaved before putting a shot into the upper corner.

There was some hooting and hollering, a raised stick, and a celebration with one knee touching the ice before the winger with a big grin threw a hit into the glass at the end boards.

Peering through the glass along the sideline were Ed Snider Youth Hockey & Education campers who one day hoped to follow in Zielinski’s footsteps. Above him hung banners that also dotted the other sheet of ice at the Skate Zone. Each banner includes a name, a logo, and a year. There are Mattias Samuelsson-Buffalo Sabres-2018; Cam Dineen, who just signed with the Flyers, with Arizona Coyotes-2016; Tyler Boucher-Ottawa Senators-2021; Cayden Primeau-Montreal Canadiens-2017; and the late Johnny Gaudreau-Calgary Flames-2011.

A 15th banner is now set to join them: One for Blake Zielinski, Los Angeles Kings, 2026.

“Obviously being drafted is a dream come true,” he told The Inquirer via text while on the West Coast for the Kings’ development camp. “It’s what I’ve been working toward my entire life. There’s honestly no words that you can describe the feeling that went through me after my name was called. I couldn’t have done it without my family and everyone who helped along the way, and it’s just the beginning, for sure!”

While the beginning of Zielinski’s NHL dreams is on the West Coast in gray, black, and white, his origin story is in orange and black.

A natural skater finds his calling

On a quiet street in Berlin, Camden County, nicely manicured lawns dot the landscape. Inside one of those houses lies a basement that has seen its fair share of knee hockey, and the living room’s hardwood floor is scratched because of a makeshift puck made out of an old tobacco tin and tape. Three kids, Grant, Kylie, and Blake, the youngest, filled this house with memories.

The backyard is typical, with a comfortable sitting area, green grass, lighting, and a white fence. The fence looks tall, but it is actually not tall enough. Despite its majestic height, it cannot stop hard rubber disks from heading into a neighbor’s yard.

“I broke a couple of fences when I was younger,” Blake said with a chuckle. That is why two summers ago, Blake, his father, Joe, and one of Joe’s friends dug a foot down into the dirt, built a shooting platform — it has a BZ97 on it — and set up netting that stretches all around a hockey goal, almost touching the fence on both sides and going vertically to the sky.

This spot, regardless of the weather, has seen several buckets of pucks find the netting — preferably between the pipes of the 6-by-4-foot goal — or stopped by Mabel, the family dog.

All of these moments have been tinder, lighting up easily as Blake’s love of the game and his skill level have grown to become a third-round NHL draft pick. But the initial spark came from the Flyers, of course.

“My first hockey game [that] I think I ever watched was the Flyers in the Stanley Cup Finals in 2010,” he said. “I was 2 or 3 years old, and I saw Patrick Kane score the goal on the Flyers, and it stuck with me. I don’t know why. But that’s one reason I really love hockey, and just, in general, after that, I just fell in love with it.”

Blake would often accompany his older brother Grant’s ball hockey games in Marlton, Burlington County. He was handed a stick and ball, and spent time hitting the ball off the rink before finally playing games from his preschool days until the eighth grade. The ice hockey itch came early.

By the age of 3, he wanted to skate, his mom Julie recalls.

“My friend Jenn [Edwards], I just happened to meet with her because our daughters played field hockey together and she said, ‘Oh, I’m a skater. … I can teach him,’” Julie said.

“So I said, ‘Let’s go.’ Put on his little jacket … he had a helmet. And went over to the Flyers Skate Zone, met with her. And she said, ‘He’s doing great. How long has he skated for?’ I said, ‘About 20 minutes.’”

The family still jokes that Jenn said it just because she wanted to make money with lessons, but that was far from the case. It was easy to see Blake’s knack for moving on ice — and for the record, Edwards jokes in return that she wants credit for him becoming a draft pick.

A Flyers fan, and an audience with Johnny Hockey

Over time, Zielinski progressed through the youth hockey ranks in the Greater Philly Area. While his number has changed over the years — he was, coincidentally, given Danny Brière’s No. 48 by the Kings at development camp — some of it was with a No. 93 on the back. One of his favorite players growing up was former Flyers right wing Jakub Voráček.

“My first game, I was pretty young. I think I had this Voráček jersey. I got surprised for my birthday,” Blake said. “ … I think there used to be a restaurant in Wells Fargo where you can see the ice when you’re up there eating. Just enjoyed it with my family.”

The number of games he has attended over the years is too big to count. Joe would often take Grant and Blake on Thursday nights, and they would have to begrudgingly leave early because it was a school night, his sons often chirping at their dad if they’d left a game that the Flyers came back to win.

Recently, Blake was there watching the Flyers take on the Pittsburgh Penguins in almost every home game of the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, dreaming of what it would be like under those same bright lights.

“When he was in preschool, he made a book, and the whole book was based on the Flyers,” Julie said. “The rink, the number, all of it, the little stick figures. And it was, one day, when I grew up, I’m going to play for the Flyers. … He wore Flyers stuff all the time to school. And every picture was always Flyers or [a] rink or something.”

Blake would actually don orange and black, playing for Virtua and Flyers Elite, which is where people began noticing the kid racking up points. As a youngster, he skated with the kids of Flyers players and coaches, and he suited up for Tony Voce, the first Philly native to play for the Flyers organization, a few times, including at the World Selects Invitational.

And like any local kid, he plied his trade not only at Pennsauken and Voorhees, but also at Holleydell Ice Arena in Sewell, Gloucester County, working with South Jersey coaching legend Guy Gaudreau and skating a few times with his son Johnny in the summer.

“When I was on a summer team, Guy was coaching us; Johnny would always come on the ice a little bit and come around,” Zielinski said. “And so he came out to one of the practices, and he demoed one of these drills, and just came down — we were like 7- or 8-year-olds, and he just ripped it on our goalie.

“That was always one of the moments that I remember, just him coming down and always giving the kids in the community a good laugh, and just that was the person he was,” Blake recalled of the Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue Jackets forward, who was a fatal victim in an alleged drunken-driving incident while cycling along with his brother Matthew in August 2024 in South Jersey.

The hockey world takes notice

At the age of 15, Blake started playing with the North Jersey Avalanche, a top-tier U16 squad based out of Ice House in Hackensack.

It took a village to get him up and down the state for practices and games, with his sister Kylie picking Blake up from school and dropping him off at Julie’s school before she got him to Joe’s office for the drive north. There were a lot of late-night dinners at home — often after midnight — before getting up early for school.

Although he eventually billeted in North Jersey, the long trips paid off. It was with the Avalanche that Providence College first saw Zielinski play; he will be a freshman there in the fall. And it was there that he was asked to head to Des Moines, Iowa, for a two-week stint in November 2024 with the Buccaneers of the United States Hockey League. He went out again in December and was in the airport in Chicago, eating and watching YouTube videos, waiting to head home, when he got the call that the Bucs wanted him to play the rest of the season with them.

“When I went out and watched him play in Des Moines, I was really impressed with how well he wanted the puck and was holding on to the puck in the game,” Friars coach Nate Leaman said during a recent phone interview.

“He’s like the youngest guy in the game, and he was really good at getting the puck, holding on to the puck and making plays with the puck. Typically, you see young guys go in the USHL, and they’re a little timid, but I thought he did a really good job with that.

“He’s really crafty around the net. He can score. He’s another kid who is pretty physically put together,” he added about the 6-foot, 187-pound winger. “I think that’s good, but I think the big thing with him is just that you get him below the tops of circles, on the power play, around the net, he’s really crafty and quick in those situations.”

He notched 32 points in 41 games to finish the year, with the hockey world starting to take notice. Last summer, he opened more eyes when he helped the United States win gold at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, leading the team with four goals and nine points. In the semifinals, he was named USA Hockey’s player of the game after potting a goal and an assist and scoring in the shootout with a “T.J. Oshie move” to beat Canada, 4-3.

This past season was a busy one. Aside from 55 points in 53 regular-season games and two goals in three playoff games for the Bucs, he was a late addition to the U.S. roster at the CHL USA Prospects Challenge, a two-game series between top prospects for the 2026 draft from the Canadian Hockey League and the U.S. National Team Development Program Under-18 Team.

In December, as a 17-year-old, he was part of the U.S. team that won gold at the World Junior “A” Challenge, a U-19 tournament, notching two goals and four points in five games. And in January, he played in the Chipotle All-American Game, showcasing the top draft-eligible players from USA Hockey’s U-18 National Team and other teams in the USHL.

And at the end of the USHL season, Zielinski received the Gaudreau Award, an honor given annually to the player in the United States Hockey League who best embodies the legacy of Johnny and Matthew.

“Despite his elite talent, Blake competes with humility and respect for the game,” his coach for Des Moines, Derek Damon, told USHL.com. “He understands that success is built through team effort, and he consistently uses his ability not just to stand out, but to lift the performance and confidence of everyone around him.”

Soon Blake Zielinski’s banner will hang near the one with Johnny Gaudreau’s name on it. It went by fast for the Zielinski clan. One day, he was a kid, bigger than others his age, unable to stop, and now the hope is that another South Jersey kid will follow in the footsteps of Johnny and live out his NHL dreams.

“It’s just been a great ride, and the time went so fast, you didn’t have time to think about anything,” Joe said. The ride is not done, but, as Voce, who died in July 2024, would advise, have fun.

“I think that’s one of the biggest things,” Blake said. “When I was younger, just go out there and enjoy it. My dad said that a lot to me when I was growing up, you have to enjoy every day, every second, because you never really know what could happen.”