WORCESTER—In the galaxy of sports, pro hockey is the Pluto of the solar system.
The game is the smallest of worlds. It is one where almost everyone is related, one where almost everyone eventually has played on the same team as everybody else, where almost everyone has a friend or neighbor he grew up with also playing hockey for living.
Railers forward Blade Jenkins is one of those Pluto guys, one of a few on this season’s team.
“Almost everyone in my family plays hockey,” Jenkins said, “and my dad played at Maine, then played in this league, too.”
That dad would be Todd Jenkins. A forward, he had a fine four-year career at Maine from 1985-86 through 1988-89, then skated two seasons for the Nashville Knights of what was then called the East Coast Hockey League.
Todd Jenkins was a good player there. His numbers were 26-59-85 in 70 games. The local angle? One of Todd Jenkins’s teammates in Nashville in 1989-90 was Ed Krayer, an executive with the IceCats in 1994-95, pro hockey’s debut season in Worcester.
The Jenkins family is from Jackson, Mich., a city about halfway between Detroit and Lake Michigan. It is the birthplace of the Republican Party and the Coney Island hot dog. It is also the site of Michigan’s first state prison, just a big penalty box, really.
Blade Jenkins is engaged and has moved a little closer to Detroit, one of those places the travel brochures tell tourists to avoid.
“If you want to go to a nice restaurant, want to see a game or a show,” he said, “you go to Detroit. It’s really gotten a lot better. I think a lot of that reputation is unfair.”
Blade Jenkins grew up during the Red Wings’ Stanley Cup era. He was not a Red Wings fan, though.
“My favorite player is Sidney Crosby,” he said, “so I was a Pittsburgh Penguins fan. When all the other 10-year-olds were cheering for the Red Wings, I was the kid in the Penguins jersey cheering for Pittsburgh.”
Jenkins has never met Crosby. That’s a point of a little teammate-envy since Railers defenseman Connor Welsh skated with Crosby during summer scrimmages in Halifax last summer.
Jenkins played junior hockey in Michigan. He spent three years with Saginaw of the Ontario Hockey League. That is good geography as junior hockey goes, which meant he had friends and family at home games. At Saginaw, Jenkins played with Railers teammate Tristan Lennox as well as Cole Coskey and Justin Murray, both Railers before Jenkins arrived in town.
He is just 23, but this is already Jenkins’s fourth season as a pro. He was 20 when he debuted with Bridgeport in 2020, He is one of the most experienced players on this year’s Railers and wears an “A” as an alternate captain.
Jenkins has spent parts of three seasons in the American Hockey League. Getting back to that level is the immediate goal.
“Everybody here wants to move up,” he said. “What I’m working on is consistency, to play at a high level every game. That’s my main goal right now.”
In his two seasons here, Jenkins has been about a point-a-game forward at 14-26-40 in 46 games. That averages out at .87 points per game, fifth on the Railers’ all-time list in that department for players with at least 40 games.
Ryan Hitchcock (1.02), Collin Adams (.975), Coskey (.943) and Chris Langkow (.90) are ahead of Jenkins.
Jenkins is one of at least five Railers with family ties in the pro game. Christian Krygier and Jake Pivonka had NHL dads. John Copeland and Jenkins had fathers who played in the minors. Joey Cipollone has a cousin, Joe Cipollone, who skated for South Carolina in the ECHL last season.
One more name will be added to the family tree in not too long, as well. Jenkins’s fiancee, Savannah Veri, played varsity college hockey.
Like a lot of hockey players, and the same with the Railers, Jenkins plays golf and is good at it with a handicap of 4 or so. IceCats defenseman Derek Diener became a pro golfer. Sharks forward Bracken Kearns was a scratch player as was Railers forward Nick Sorkin.
You can play golf forever, but not pro hockey, so that is Jenkins’s focus these days. He is hoping that with enough focus and consistency, he will be headed back up the hockey ladder sooner rather than later.
Bill Ballou covered the Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram from 1997 through 2018. He has covered pro hockey in Worcester since 1994 and currently does a weekly column for the Worcester Red Sox. Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
