Since Matt Carle won the Hobey Baker Award as the NCAA’s top hockey player in 2006 and departed the University of Denver program after his junior season, the young defenseman has played for three NHL teams — San Jose, Tampa Bay and Philadelphia — and been traded twice.
It has been a reminder that while none of his classes at DU’s Daniels School of Business used the NHL as a case study, his chosen line of work is a business too.
“You try to make the best of every situation, and realize that you’re playing a game that you love,” said Carle, 25.
The Alaska native has settled in with the Flyers, who face the Avalanche on Monday at the Pepsi Center. Usually paired with Chris Pronger, acquired from Anaheim in the offseason, Carle had two goals and 11 assists entering a Friday game at San Jose, was playing 24 minutes a game and was a league-leading plus-18.
“It’s a great organization and has been for a long time,” said Carle, who was dealt to Philadelphia from Tampa Bay in November 2008 after playing only 12 games for the Lightning. “As a hockey player, that’s all you can really ask for, to be part of an organization that’s committed to winning. They take care of the players there very well, and it’s a great city to play in.”
His 2009-10 start, he said, “comes from having more experience. I got off to a great start in the league in my rookie season and kind of hit a bump in the road the next couple of years and had to deal with some adversity. This year, it’s been a combination of learning from that and knowing what to expect from the coaching staff and players. And the addition of a guy like Chris Pronger to our back end makes a big difference.”
Pronger, the well-traveled former Hart Trophy winner, was an especially key acquisition given that the Flyers play Pittsburgh, with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and Washington, with Alex Ovechkin, six times a year apiece.
“He’s made me a better player, for sure,” Carle said of Pronger. “It’s just made me able to read the plays better and be more aggressive in both the offensive zone and defensive zone and you just try and watch him from time to time and pick up on some of his habits and put those into my game.”
At DU, Carle played two seasons with Avalanche center Paul Stastny and met his fiancee, Clancey. His highly recruited younger brother, David, also a defenseman, was planning to enter DU when a heart problem — hypertrophic cardiomyopathy — was discovered at the June 2008 NHL scouting combine, and he had to abandon his playing career. DU honored his scholarship, and he is a student assistant coach for the Pioneers.
“That was huge,” Matt said. “I wouldn’t expect anything different from Coach Gwozdecky. That university is first class all the way. I don’t remember if it was David or my dad making the phone call to tell them about the situation, but we didn’t even have to ask. They stepped up right away and made sure that David’s education was going to be taken care of.”
David recently underwent a procedure at the Mayo Clinic to combat his condition. Because hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is considered hereditary, Matt has been checked out too.
“I’ll go to the Mayo Clinic every summer and keep up on it and make sure my heart hasn’t changed at all,” Matt said. “It’s a thickening of the heart wall, so as long as I’m consistent as to where I’m at, I’ll be OK. So far, so good.”
Carle is in the second season of a four-year, $13.75 million contract. He lives in southern New Jersey, where the Flyers practice, but the move to the Philadelphia area has been an adjustment for an Anchorage native who attended college in the West and began his NHL career with a 151-game stint with the Sharks. He has been savvy enough to learn that a convenient spot for a postgame meal is one of the famous cheese-steak sandwich stands, across the street from each other 2 miles from the Wachovia Center.
So, which of the stands near the arena has the best cheese steaks?
Carle laughed. “Pat’s or Geno’s?” he asked. “I do whichever has the shorter line.”
He gets a plus for that bit of diplomacy too.
Spotlight on …
Avs’ Anderson making case to be an Olympian
USA Hockey will announce its choices for the 2010 Olympic team during the Bruins-Flyers Winter Classic outdoor game Jan. 1, and Avalanche goalie Craig Anderson’s jump into the race means Colorado could have as many as six players in the Vancouver Games.
Going into the season, these were the five likely Avalanche Olympians: Paul Stastny (USA), Milan Hejduk (Czech Republic), Marek Svatos and Peter Budaj (Slovakia) and Ruslan Salei (Belarus).
Salei is recovering from a back problem and has played in only one game. Budaj’s stock certainly has sunk, but he was terrific for the Slovaks in the 2006 Games, and he likely will join Montreal’s Jaroslav Halak as the team’s top two goalies.
If also picked, the Illinois-born Anderson almost certainly would be ticketed to be the “third” American goalie, behind Buffalo’s Ryan Miller and Boston’s Tim Thomas, who also are having strong seasons. The Los Angeles Kings’ Jonathan Quick, 23, was the only other goalie invited to the U.S. team’s orientation camp in August, but Anderson has outplayed Quick in the first quarter of 2009-10.
The New York Islanders’ Rick DiPietro, the 2006 American starter, hasn’t played since Jan. 2 because of injuries and isn’t expected to play until mid-December. So he’s an unlikely selection.
Avalanche defenseman John-Michael Liles was on the 2006 USA team in Italy, but he wasn’t selected for the orientation camp. He has been in and out of the lineup with a shoulder problem.
Hockey, always one of the showcase events of the Winter Olympics, will be even more interesting this time because the Games are in Canada, where the tournament will be considered a referendum on the state of the national sport (with all due respect to curling and lacrosse).
Terry Frei, The Denver Post
