The first Saturday of 2025 was a sunny, windy day with temperatures hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit in Raleigh, N.C., as the Carolina Hurricanes concluded their morning skate prior to that evening’s home game against the Wild.

In Minnesota, that kind of weather is common in late March or April, but after less than a year in the sunny southeastern United States, it didn’t feel like spring to Jackson Blake. Inside the Hurricanes locker room, he reflected on prep hockey in Eden Prairie and college hockey in North Dakota, and giggled a little at folks in the South who complain when it’s below freezing yet a long way from below zero.

Blake quickly acknowledged, however, “That was me today, actually.”

“I was freezing today,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I haven’t been hot today yet, which is surprising because I lived in Grand Forks, which is the coldest place in the world, I think. At least it feels like that. It only took about three months (in North Carolina) to get like that.”

Blake’s tolerance for the cold, or lack thereof, isn’t the only quick adjustment he has made since joining the Hurricanes.

Playing every game this season, he has seen his on-ice game make the quick transition from the speed and size of the college game to the advanced level of NHL hockey. Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour, who made a similar jump from Michigan State to the NHL a generation ago, praised Blake for the off-ice strength work that has allowed him to fit in.

“I see a huge step from where he was, and it’s more in his physicalness, like his maturing. It’s going from that teenager to a man,” Brind’Amour said. “Just naturally, you get bigger and stronger and you’re OK, and then put in the work. He put in a lot of work this summer, and it really paid off. … He was always talented, but all of a sudden you add that little strength element, and the willingness to learn how the game goes here (and) he’s picking it up real quick.”

The hockey bloodlines are strong in Blake, whose father Jason played more than 900 games in the NHL over a decade-plus after winning an NCAA title at North Dakota. Jackson followed the family legacy and played for the Fighting Hawks after his goal in double overtime lifted Eden Prairie past Lakeville North in the 2021 Minnesota State Tournament’s Class AA title game.

Blake averaged well over a point per game in his two seasons at North Dakota, and was one of the three Hat Trick finalists for the Hobey Baker Award last season (which went to Macklin Celebrini of Boston University, now skating for the San Jose Sharks). He signed with Carolina and got one NHL game on his resume last spring, then spent the warmer months hard at work getting his body in shape for the next level.

“He’s a highly intelligent player, highly skilled player. Even before the season, in training camp here, in the scrimmages and stuff, you could see, ‘Wow, he’s talented.’ That makes it easy to be on the ice with him,” said forward Jack Drury, who spent this season’s first four months on a line with Blake before being traded to Colorado late last month.

Coming from previous levels of hockey where, generally, you practice all week and play games on weekends, the calendar has been the biggest adjustment for Blake.

“We’d always have Sunday off, and Monday kind of a little treatment day or something like that, and then you have the whole week to kind of prepare for the next weekend,” he said. “Here, I don’t even know the days anymore. It’s kind of crazy like that. You’ve kind of gotta really take advantage of every time you can get sleep in and all those things, because you probably play the next day, the day after that.”

The condensed schedule seems to suit Blake, who has played in all 54 of the Hurricanes’ games so far, posting 11 goals and seven assists heading into the Thursday night game back in Minnesota — where there are sure to be emotions, and lots of friends and family in the stands. He arrived in Minnesota on a cold, windy winter day, and after all of that time in the Carolina sun, just getting to the rink could be its own challenge.

“Yeah, he’s getting soft,” Brind’Amour joked. “That’s what he’s gotta watch out for. That’s why I wear shorts all the time.”