Ian Cole helped create Landon Slaggert's earliest hockey memory. The new Blackhawks defenseman, now 37, was a 19-year-old freshman when Notre Dame made a dramatic run through the 2008 NCAA tournament to the national championship game, which they lost to Boston College. Slaggert, now 24, was a six-year-old kid at the time, scrambling around the locker room while his dad Andy, an assistant coach, did his job. To him, those Fighting Irish players were his "superheroes." Cole remembers Slaggert as an even younger kid while he was being recruited to Notre Dame, too. Now, they're Hawks teammates. "[It's] a little weird," Slaggert said Friday, smiling. "I'm kind of hitting a quarter-life crisis. But it's pretty sweet, honestly." It would probably be weirder if they hadn't seen each other plenty of times at Notre Dame events in recent years, but they have. They know each other well now. Cole, for that matter, knows many people around the hockey world well. That's inevitable for a personable guy who just joined his 10th different franchise in his 17th NHL season. He and Frank Nazar share the same agent, Kevin Magnuson. He and Teuvo Teravainen played together on the Hurricanes in 2021-22. The next season, he was coached by then-Lightning assistant coach Jeff Blashill in Tampa. Those "known quantities" gave Cole comfort when he decided to sign a one-year, $4 million contract with the Hawks on July 1. "I'm a big fan of how [Blashill] handles the team and the spotlight and how he runs things," Cole said. "He does a really great job." He has enjoyed familiarizing himself with rest of the young Hawks, including defenseman Sam Rinzel, who was four years old when Cole went to college yet has skated as his regular partner throughout training camp. Their collective "youthful exuberance" has been refreshing, putting aside the fact they never understand his movie references. "The guys are young, yes, but everyone wants to get better...and everyone wants to be a playoff team," Cole said. "I think everyone here believes that we can do that." Cole's teams have made the playoffs in 12 of his first 16 seasons, including Stanley Cup wins with the Penguins in 2016 and 2017, so he has plenty of relevant firsthand experience to share. That hasn't happened much yet inside the locker room, but he expects it will as the season progresses. One occasion that will likely prompt a discussion: Cole will hit the 1,000-game milestone after just 10 games with the Hawks, possibly (barring injury) as soon as Oct. 23. His most recent playoff berth came last season with the Mammoth — a young-in-their-own-right team that the Hawks actually swept in their four-game season series, giving Cole a glimpse of the Hawks' potential before he joined them. "Last year, I think they had the ability to beat anyone on any given day and also potentially lose to anyone on any given day," he said. "My read of the situation...is if we can clean up some of those things that caused us to lose games, we'll put ourselves in a very good position to continue to climb those standings." Cole essentially replaces Connor Murphy as the elder statesman of the Hawks' defense and a staple of their penalty kill. Slaggert, who obviously knows Murphy well, agreed their "calming presence" is similar. "Ian does a really good job of managing risk-reward," Blashill said. "[He] knows when there’s a play to be made and when there’s not. [He] doesn’t try to make something up that’s not there. [He] really understands what he’s good at and does that. "He’s got a maturity to his game. And if there’s an area that all young players have to improve at, that would be the maturity of their game. ... It makes [him] a really good match for our group."
