The Columbus Blue Jackets have turned a running joke into something fans can wear. A shirt featuring Damon Severson and Charlie Coyle is now being sold after the Blue Line Team store partnered with 500 Level, putting the team’s oddest roster quirk on display.
That is happening because the comparisons are not new, and they are not limited to one pairing. Fans have joked for a while that Severson and Coyle could pass for each other, while Cam Talbot and Erik Gudbranson have also drawn the same treatment from fans and teammates. The timing matters because Coyle arrived in Columbus in 2025, and the jokes have only kept going since then.
For Coyle, the resemblance has already produced one of those moments that sticks. He said young kids at camp thought they were talking to Severson when they were talking to him, and his answer was plain enough: “I think you think I'm Severson. I'm Charlie. I'm new. Sorry!” It is the kind of mix-up that lands because the players themselves have clearly heard the chatter and have not tried to shut it down.
Severson has gone the other way and made the comparison part of the joke. “We lean into it. We say we're brothers,” he said, adding that they grew up “on opposite ends of the spectrum,” with Coyle as East Coast-Boston and him as a West Coast Canadian. That contrast is what gives the bit its staying power: the faces may read alike to fans, but the backgrounds do not, and the mismatch makes the resemblance funnier rather than less believable.
The same pattern has followed Talbot and Gudbranson since Talbot joined the Columbus Blue Jackets. Gudbranson said the first thing he heard about Talbot was the resemblance, and that Jet Greaves told him Talbot was “bringing my brother in, because we look alike.” Talbot did not hesitate when asked who would do better in the other’s job, saying, “Oh, definitely me. One hundred percent,” before adding that most people think goalie is easy in practice until they see how their body feels after one day.
That is the point of the whole thing. The Blue Jackets have not only ended up with two lookalike pairings, they have also turned one of them into merchandise, which is how an offhand joke becomes part of the team’s public identity. The open question now is not whether fans will keep making the comparisons — they will — but which pair they decide looks most alike once the shirts, the jokes and the camp stories are all part of the same conversation.
