In Omaha, they attended high school together in Nebraska’s largest city as athletes living away from home, playing junior hockey for the River City Lancers of the United States Hockey League.
After moving on, they were classmates and teammates for the University of Denver Pioneers, winning an NCAA championship together in 2005. Matt Carle also was on DU’s 2004 national title team, the season before Paul Stastny arrived.
And now as pros, Colorado center Stastny and San Jose Sharks defenseman Carle are rookie opponents, finding themselves mentioned among the top first-year players in the NHL as they manage to stay in touch. There are phone calls here, a dinner there as their teams are about to meet, and nods of the head as they spot each other in the arena hallways – and sometimes even on the ice.
Stastny and Carle will meet again tonight in the Sharks’ HP Pavilion, where the struggling Avalanche begins a two-game California swing that concludes Saturday night in Los Angeles against the Kings.
As their careers progress, these occasional reunions could become old hat, but friendships formed at such a young age are difficult to dissolve.
Last spring, when the Pioneers failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament field and lost out on a chance to seek a third consecutive national championship, Carle chose to forgo his final season of eligibility, immediately signed with the Sharks and played down the stretch of the regular season and in the playoffs. His transition was surprisingly smooth, though he did have to leave the team briefly to accept the Hobey Baker Memorial Award as college hockey’s top player.
“In my opinion,” Stastny said, “he could have left after his sophomore year and played in the NHL last season. But he stayed and he matured as a person his junior year and got a little bit better as a hockey player.
“I think he’s been the player he is, in a lot of ways, for a long time. He was an early bloomer. At Omaha, you could tell how good a player he was. I can’t say enough about him, bottom line.”
When Carle, a Sharks’ second-round draft choice in 2003, signed, it didn’t catch anyone by surprise, and if there was any second-guessing, it was muted. Carle was deemed ready for the NHL, and he also was close enough to getting a degree that taking courses in the future, and obtaining a diploma was a realistic option.
Stastny, just finishing up his sophomore year, was a different story. The consensus was that not only would he stick around for at least one more season at DU, he would be better off for doing so. Yet Colorado, which had made Stastny a second-round pick in 2005, signed him after both Paul and his family – including his father, Hall of Fame winger Peter Stastny – indicated he wanted to turn pro.
Had Carle’s seamless transition influenced his teammate?
“Not at all,” Paul Stastny said. “I was happy for him, but that had nothing to do with my decision.”
Without the two stars, DU is having an up-and-down season. Pioneers coach George Gwozdecky has been philosophical about the scenario and remains unrelentingly complimentary of Carle and Stastny. But the coach also said he sometimes wonders what the 2006-07 team might be if they had stuck around. Stastny admits he and Carle have done the same thing in their conversations.
“We’ve thought about it, sure,” he said. “But you can even look back to the year before, what we would have done if (defenseman Brett) Skinner had stayed.”
Skinner, who had been named the Pioneers’ captain for 2005-06, instead signed with the Vancouver Canucks after the end of the NHL lockout last year. He played the entire season in the AHL, and after being traded to Anaheim, he still is in the AHL, with the Portland (Maine) Pirates.
“I think this is good for DU,” Stastny said. “Carle and I both left, and now we’re both playing in the NHL. It’s a great program, and it developed us so much as players. It speaks volumes about the program.”
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
