The Carolina Hurricanes have found a new Stanley Cup Playoffs storyline, and it has nothing to do with a shift change or a power play. Jackson Blake’s beard has become a running joke inside the room, with teammates giving the 22-year-old winger an “A for effort” for trying to keep a postseason tradition alive.
Blake has some facial hair, but not much of it stands out. His teammates say the effort is real, yet the results are limited, and the biggest reason may be simple: his blond hair makes the beard harder to see.
A beard that is there, but barely
Blake admitted the look is not strong by playoff standards. “My beard is … it’s not very good. I’m not going to lie,” he said, with his own description matching what others see on his face.
The difference became easy to notice on Stanley Cup Final media day, when Blake sat beside teammate Jalen Chatfield, whose beard drew a much clearer frame around his face. Blake looked over and made the comparison himself, saying, “Mine doesn’t look like that right now.”
Teammates notice the color more than the growth
Hurricanes winger Taylor Hall said the issue may not be effort, but genetics. He pointed out that some players simply cannot grow a full beard, and that blond hair makes sparse growth even less visible.
“I mean it’s blond too, so you can’t really see it very well, but he’s trying,” Hall said.
Mark Jankowski offered a similar view, saying Blake “got some stuff there,” while adding that the lighter color makes it harder to spot. Blake agreed that lighting can change the way it looks, though he did not sound optimistic about the overall effect.
Tradition matters more than appearance
Even with the jokes, Blake said the beard is still part of the playoff routine. He said his teammates have not been overly hard on him, and he has accepted that the tradition is worth keeping even if the final product is uneven.
“They’ve been pretty nice actually to me for that,” Blake said. “They haven’t really said anything about it, but, I mean, I see myself every day and I know what it looks like. I’m not very confident in it. But it’s a tradition, so I’m going to let it go.”
That attitude fits the culture of the postseason, where the beard often becomes a badge of survival as much as style. For Blake, the goal has shifted from growing a strong beard to simply growing something at all.
Playoff production has made the beard a side note
The Hurricanes are much more interested in what Blake does on the ice. He is second on the team in scoring with 15 points, including five goals and 10 assists, and he has done it while skating on one of the postseason’s most effective lines alongside Hall and center Logan Stankoven.
This is Blake’s second full NHL season, and he has already reached at least the conference final for the second time. After last postseason, the standard for his playoff beard was simple: grow something, and he has done that, even if the result is thin.
Blake said he had almost nothing growing in last year, while this year brought “a little more.” He plans to keep it until the season ends, then shave it right away, leaving the Hurricanes’ focus where it has mostly been all along: on his role in a strong postseason run, not on the patchy beard that has become part of the team’s lighthearted media-day conversation.
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