Jack Jablonski was paralyzed during a high school game in 2011, but that hasn’t stopped him from chasing his NHL dream. Jablonski, 20, has landed his first NHL gig as a communications intern with the Los Angeles Kings in 2015-16.

The Hockey News

Jack Jablonski’s story continues to get more inspiring.

Jablonski, a promising high school hockey player, fractured two vertebrae in his neck and severed his spinal cord following a hit from behind in a Dec. 30, 2011 game. Instantly, Jablonski was paralyzed. Following the injury, Jablonski became a hero to many through his perseverance and positive attitude. And though Jablonski remains paralyzed from the chest down, he hasn’t stopped chasing his big-league dream.

Now a 20-year-old journalism and communications student at University of Southern California, Jablonski will be working with the Los Angeles Kings as a communications intern. He’ll be patrolling the press box for the 2015-16 campaign, according to the Orange County Register’s Rich Hammond.

“I definitely wanted to keep pursuing a career in hockey and that hockey lifestyle,” Jablonski told Hammond. “I’m super interested in PR and communications so I hoped I could find an area that was a good fit.’’

Following his injury, Jablonski, family and friends launched the BEL13VE in Miracles Foundation, with the goal of raising awareness and funds “to advance recovery for everyone living with a spinal cord injury.” Jablonski and his foundation have received support from a number of professional athletes. He hopes to get back on his skates one day, living to “prove the doctors wrong.”

Jablonski began to pursue other routes of making it to the NHL, which led him to launch his own podcast, “Jack in the Box,” on KFAN Sports Radio. And by the 2013-14 season, Jablonski’s broadcasting career took the next step when he began, “Hockey Night in Minnesota with Jack Jablonski,” a weekly radio program broadcast on Minneapolis radio station 105 The Ticket.

“Having had the opportunity to work in radio the last couple years, that’s been a blast,” Jablonski told Hammond. “That’s definitely an interest and passion of mine, but I’ve been looking into anything in sports media. I don’t know where I want to go and what I want to do exactly, but that’s what this time is for, and I’m looking forward to figuring it out.”