LetsGoDU

How Matt Carle Was Recruited

So you're a young up-and-coming assistant coach and you want to land the greatest prospect in the history of your program.

Do you...

a). Hit the highway and build personal relationships with every top prospect in the country?
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b). Offer cash and cars to every kid you meet?
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c). Sit by your phone and wait for the kid's Juniors Coach to tell you to contact the parents?

According to today's Rocky Mountain News the correct answer is "c."
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Carle could bring something new to DU

By Pat Rooney, Special to the News
January 31, 2006
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A phone call. That's all Matt Carle wanted.
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Instead, the recruiting process slowly was turning from an exciting adventure to a dispiriting nuisance.

Carle had an opportunity to go to any school in the nation. Michigan State, Colorado College, Wisconsin, Minnesota - all schools with rich hockey traditions.

Carle's phone was ringing often enough, and the suitors held their share of promise. Yet none struck the kind of chord that tells anxious recruits they have found a home. Not until Carle took matters into his own hands and put the word out that he was interested in the University of Denver.

Now it is impossible to imagine the Pioneers' return to national hockey glory without Carle.

The junior defenseman and co-captain from Anchorage, Alaska, has not known what it is like to end a college hockey season without a national championship.

His landmark freshman season ended with DU's first title in 35 years. His sophomore season ended with a repeat title that was the seventh overall for DU, moving the Pioneers into a tie with North Dakota for the second most in college hockey history.

Along the way, Carle's individual accolades have piled up faster than ice shavings along the end boards. This season, though, he has taken his game to another level, and the buzz is swirling faster every week about Carle's chances of landing the one trophy no Pioneers player has hoisted - the Hobey Baker Award.

And to think there was a time the DU coaching staff assumed Carle, who had spent two years with the U.S. National Team Development Program, wanted no part of Denver. It took a phone call from Ken Martell of USA Hockey to DU's coaching office to resurrect the Pioneers' interest.

"To be honest, we didn't think we'd have a chance of getting Matt here," DU assistant and recruiting coordinator Steve Miller said. "(Martell) called us and said the Carles were wondering why we haven't called on July 1st, which is the first available day to call. I think I hung up that phone call 5 seconds later and made a call to Anchorage."

The rest, as they say, is history.