It was still April 11 in L.A. and Jeff Carter would have to finish packing soon.
The Penguins had just acquired the 36-year-old forward from the Los Angeles Kings, ending his unforgettable nine years there. And the next day it would be wheels up to Pittsburgh to join his new team. But first, he had to say goodbye.
Carter headed to Jonathan Quick’s house in Manhattan Beach. Dustin Brown and Drew Doughty, now his ex-teammates, met him there, as did Jarret Stoll and Matt Greene, former Kings players who now work within the organization.
The last six champions left from their Stanley Cup wins in 2012 and 2014 sat out on Quick’s patio and reminisced about all the great times together.
“It was awesome. But it was sad. It definitely was,” Stoll said two weeks ago. “And I know Jeff was sad about it even though he’s going to a team that wants him and has a good chance to win. But I know he’s excited about the team.”
The feeling is mutual for the Penguins, who will face the New York Islanders in the first round of the playoffs. They believe Carter, with his quiet confidence and sneaky shot and postseason pedigree, might just be their finishing piece.
He certainly was that for the Kings in 2012, which is why the first significant move that new general manager Ron Hextall made was to bring the big lug in.
Carter has come a long way since his early years in Philadelphia, when he had quite a few battles with Sidney Crosby and Co. before the Flyers shockingly traded him away. He is all grown up now, with a couple of rings and a couple of kids.
“It’s just neat to see the evolution of a young boy growing into a man. Now he’s the grizzled veteran with the beard,” Hextall said. “Jeff has always been a very humble guy, and after 16 or 17 years in the league that isn’t going to change.”
A natural on the ice
Carter hails from London, Ontario. His father Jim, who was selected between Mike Gartner and Dino Ciccarelli in the 1976 Ontario Hockey League draft, coached him until he was 16. Jim didn’t push Jeff too hard. Just go out and have fun.
Jeff didn’t attend many hockey camps as a kid. The family driveway would suffice. Father and son spent hour after hour out there blasting pucks.
“It just kind of came to me,” Jeff recently said of his prodigious shot.
Dad emphasized skating and positioning, too. And Jeff’s well-rounded game grabbed the attention of the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. They took Carter third in the 2001 OHL draft, one spot ahead of future NHL teammate Mike Richards.
Carter lived with John and Debbie Campbell all four years he was in Sault Ste. Marie and his family and he remain close with them today. He flew them out to California in 2019 for his 1,000th career game and they meet up every summer.
“Jim and Sue are wonderful parents. Look at how he turned out,” Debbie said. “And Jeffrey always said that other than Hartsy, Jim was his favorite coach.”
Hartsy would be former NHL head coach Craig Hartsburg, who coached Carter at Sault Ste. Marie. He remembers a tall, scrawny 16-year-old who hadn’t yet grown into his frame. But Carter was quick, both of feet and of mind, and had a responsible defensive game to go with his “natural gift of scoring.”
“You just knew he had to get bigger and stronger and he would be a real good NHL player,” Hartsburg said. “And he’s always had a great shot. A lot of kids can shoot the puck. But it’s all over the place. Jeff very rarely missed the net.”
Hartsburg said Carter was “a man of few words,” which remains the case today. He was not “loud and attention-seeking” like a lot of kids that age can be. He carried himself with an air of seriousness and was driven to reach the NHL.
“He was so focused it was unbelievable. When they preach being focused, Jeff’s the poster boy,” Campbell added. “In four years he never, never missed a curfew. That was his life. He was going to the NHL and that’s all there was to it.”
Other billet kids joked that Jeff didn’t need to attend school because he was going to the NHL. But he fulfilled his mother’s wishes and got his diploma.
Hartsburg said he was one of the most coachable kids he’s been around.
“I remember telling his dad, ‘Jeff has been unbelievable following the program,’” Hartsburg said. “And he was like, ‘Just be careful what you tell him, because he’ll do exactly what you tell him to do.’ He understood what we had in Jeff.”
It didn’t take long for NHL scouts and player agents to figure it out, too.
“One morning I answered the phone and this fella said, ‘Can I speak to Jeff?’ I told him he was sleeping,” Campbell said. “And he goes, ‘Well, Deb, this is Bobby Orr and I’d like to speak with him for a minute.’ Jeff got a lot of attention.”
The Flyers drafted him 11th overall in 2003, after his second OHL season.
Just getting started
Carter was ready for the NHL upon arrival. He scored 23 goals as a 21-year-old rookie in 2005-06 and doubled that total three years later, when he was named an All-Star for the first time and received a handful of Hart Trophy votes.
Longtime NHL goalie Martin Biron, who played with Carter during his early years in Philadelphia, was often fooled in practice by his long reach and deceptive release. And Carter had a knack for knowing when a hole would open up.
Biron, now an analyst for SiriusXM NHL Radio, remembers a chat he had with Carter after the young forward scored a shootout goal on Buffalo’s Ryan Miller.
“I said something to him to the effect of, ‘Oh, it’s a good thing you fanned on your shot,’” Biron said. “And he said, ‘No, that’s exactly what I was trying to do.”
Carter explained that he knew Miller liked to hold his glove high and out from his body to take away the top shelf. So he made his release look as if he was aiming high then took a little off the shot to sneak it under the goalie’s glove.
“It worked perfectly,” Biron said. “That’s a pretty smart shooter right there.”
Carter scored 181 of his 399 regular season goals during his six years in Philly.
“Mike Richards was our captain and he was reserved. But he was fiery. Richie really wore his emotions on his sleeve whereas Jeff was more guarded,” Brian Boucher, now an analyst for NBC Sports, said. “You had a hard time knowing what was going on in his head. But, man, there was just a presence about him.”
The Flyers, with Carter and Richards leading the way, became a perennial playoff team. But they twice ran into another up-and-coming team from Pennsylvania. They dodged the Penguins in 2009-10 and broke through to the Cup final. Patrick Kane and the Chicago Blackhawks dispatched the Flyers in six games.
It looked then as if Richards, Carter and the Flyers were just getting started.
A year later, they moved on from both players in a pair of stunning trades.
The Philadelphia Inquirer speculated that the Flyers traded them because they had enjoyed Philadelphia’s nightlife a little too much. But Boucher pushed back on that, saying he never saw anything extraordinary from Carter and that he believed Carter was misunderstood in Philadelphia because of his reticent nature.
“Jeff loved Philly. That’s one thing I do know,” the ex-Flyers goalie said. “Make no mistake about it, he would have been a Flyer for life. He loved Philadelphia.”
Carter initially protested his trade to Columbus before reporting. The Blue Jackets moved on from him less than a year later, trading him to the Kings for Jack Johnson. The assistant GM in Los Angeles knew exactly what they were getting.
A match made in heaven
Hextall was the director of professional player personnel for the Flyers when they drafted Carter in 2003. Three years later, Hextall left to join the Kings.
The Kings, with their young core of Kopitar and Doughty and Quick, were a plucky playoff team in 2010 and 2011 and were on the fringes of the postseason picture in 2012. Scoring was an issue. They averaged just 2.11 goals per game.
As the Kings considered their options prior to the trade deadline, Carter checked a bunch of boxes beyond his goal-scoring. He was 6-foot-3 and about 220 pounds. He could skate and defend. He was a righty. Plus, he had chemistry on and off the ice with Richards, whom they had acquired the previous summer.
Then there was the most important box. Would Carter fit in with the group?
“Jeff’s always been a really good human being,” Hextall said. “From the research that our scouts did when we drafted him in Philly to the time we got him in Los Angeles to where he is now as a father and a husband and a great family man, Jeff’s always been a good person. And we knew that right from the start.”
The Kings, despite all the palm trees and Hollywood types away from the rink, were a blue-collar team under Darryl Sutter. They had a lot of respect for Carter based on what he did in Philadelphia and also while representing Team Canada.
“You could tell right away he was a confident guy. He wasn’t cocky. But he had a swagger to him, for sure. And he knew he could score,” Stoll said. “He just fit in. It was a match made in heaven. We needed goals and he provided that.”
Carter scored six to help get the Kings into the playoffs. He had a hat trick in Arizona in the third round. He beat Martin Brodeur in overtime in Game 2 of the final. And he buried two more big ones in the Cup-clinching win over New Jersey.
“Whenever there was a big, big play or a big goal, he was around it,” Stoll said.
That was also the case in 2014, when the Kings lifted the Stanley Cup again.
“He went to Los Angeles and really committed himself to being a tremendous pro, won a couple of Stanley Cups,” Boucher said. “He’s had a great career. I’m not shocked one bit. Not shocked one bit from the time I spent with him.”
All in for another Cup chase
The Kings have won just a single playoff game since 2014. After the organization entered into a rebuilding mode, Carter bear-hugged his leadership role.
Stoll, after retiring, returned to the Kings in a player development role. He noticed how the young guys kept a close eye on Carter as he went about his business. Carter, whom Stoll called “a rink rat,” has followed the same routine for years.
On the ice, Carter was just as predictable, in a good way. That’s why coach Todd McLellan often tapped a young pro on the pads and nodded in his direction.
“You just saw him taking over the team,” Stoll said. “He would invite guys over and have barbecues or line up beach volleyball games, just getting everybody together. Jeff took that really seriously and he wanted the team to get close.”
But for Carter, the fire still burned inside to chase after another Stanley Cup.
In the past, he was hesitant to leave behind his family. His wife, Megan, and their two young children loved living in California. And Carter was content in his trunks as he lugged all of their beach chairs and sand toys down to the shore.
But when Hextall came calling again a month ago today, sensing that Carter could be the final piece to another championship puzzle, Carter was “all in.”
He made sure to gather with the guys who were still around from the two Cup runs before flying to Pittsburgh, though he will never really leave L.A. behind.
“As you grow older and you’re around good people, you just kind of grasp some things. I think going out to L.A. was big for me, being around some really good teammates, really good people. Starting a family,” he said. “It all just kind of helps you grow as a person. So I was lucky to spend my nine years there.”
As was the case in 2012, he has fit in with his new team as well as hoped.
Feeling free in coach Mike Sullivan’s scheme after years of buttoned-up play in L.A., Carter had nine goals, 11 points and a plus-9 rating in 14 games with the Penguins. His four-goal game last week was the first of his career. And he has taken linemate Jared McCann, another Sault Ste. Marie standout, under his wing.
“He’s fired up,” Stoll said. “He texted me [two weeks ago] and said, ‘Man, this team can score goals.’ He’s excited he can play at both ends of the ice now.”
Now “the grizzled veteran with the beard” hopes to push them over the top.
“It’s been a great transition,” Carter said. “I think from day one the guys have been great to me. … We’re really looking forward to keeping it going here.”
