OK. The great news for all of us is that the Flames now have a huge number of guys with top six/top pairing potential. The rest of the guys on the list are either ones with bottom six potential or are ones that have significant development left to become something else. I would argue that the person left that has the best chance of developing into a bottom six contributor is Carter King. Yes. Full disclosure...I like the kid!
Offense:
Ranking the top twelve Flames forward prospects by NHLe from last year brings the following list:
Kerins 39
Reschny 37
King 35
Battaglia 35
Suniev 35
Misa 34
Gridin 33
Stockselius 32
Stromgren 28
Morton 26 (24 in his 5th college year)
Potter 23
Looking at the NCHC statistics for last year, King is top twenty in every single category other than PIM's in a division that averages 12 NHL drafted players per team. He finished 14th in the nation in goals (more than Coronato ever had in college) and 17th in points. Also hard to argue that he did this because of his linemates as he put up similar numbers in his junior year while centering the defensive shut down line.
Defense:
The offensive numbers are nice and shows that there is enough talent and IQ there to play at the next level but Carter's bread and butter is his defensive game. He is the back-to-back finalist for NCHC defensive forward of the year. His game is built on angles , positioning and stick detail which takes away spaces and lanes without really looking like he's doing that much. He's second in Denver's 75 year history in short handed goals. It also starts with his talent with faceoffs. As we all know, puck posession is vital in today's game. Carter was second in the nation in faceoff wins - more than 50 wins more than the next best center in the NCHC where he was going up against future NHL'ers every single weekend.
The last thing I'll say about his defense as a cool anecdote is that in the games that mattered the most, against the top players in the country, he shut things down. In NCAA tournament play and the three Frozen Fours he played in over the last four years, he directly matched up against Kent Johnson, Matty Beniers, Luke Hughes, Owen Power, Ryan Leonard and Gabe Perrault (x2), James Hagens, Macklin Celebrini and Lane Hudson. Those players combined for a total of zero points in four games. Obviously that's not attributable to one guy but the center on the line that faced them the most does get a lot of that responsibility.
Intangibles:
One of the big things the Flames wanted in signing Carter is to bring in winners. Carter has won his whole life and will do anything possible to do so. He won cities or provincials in every year in Bantam and Midget, leading his Buffaloes team to the National Championships in his final year. His BCHL had just won their playoff round after being last place the year before until the playoffs were cancelled due to COVID. On that note, his coach in Surrey was very confident that Carter would be one of the top players in the league in his second junior season but he ended up missing the whole year due to the pandemic. That caused him not to be drafted and put him behind a lot of kids his age in the US that got to play.
His graduating class at DU (just three of them) are the winningest class in DU history, winning 30+ games all four years, winning two national championships and losing in double overtime this year. He was assistant captain in his junior year and captain this year on a team with 15 NHL draft picks.
The Knocks:
The first thing that people bring up is that for a shutdown, fourth line center that he's undersized. At 5"11", he is shorter than the prototypical fourth line center. That said, he is just under 200 lbs - he essentially the exact same size as Blake Coleman and Sydney Crosby. If you look at the Flames forward lines from last year, he'd be essentially tied with Coleman and Huberdeau as the third heaviest forward on the team behind Klapka and Backlund. His strength is what allows him to get to the hard areas in front of the net to score his goals and also allows him to win faceoffs and board battles.
He's a good skater but not elite. He can also overthink his game which costs him pace at times. That problem goes away once he feels completely comfortable in the system he's playing so I'd expect him to need a good chunk of this year to gain that comfort and confidence.
All together, he has become the forward that every coach he's ever played for has trusted the most. His junior coach put his reputation on the line to tell Denver to sign him. David Carle at Denver said the same thing to Conroy. He's not flashy, he's not going to be toe dragging around the ice but he'll be the guy that get's tapped when a team needs to protect a lead, kill a penalty or win a faceoff. That's a guy I want on my team.
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