COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Penguins’ oldest player gathered speed through the neutral zone and blew past Anthony Beauvillier so quickly that the Islanders’ forward couldn’t even corral him with his stick to impede progress.
Jeff Carter hit the attacking blue line, cut to the middle of the ice and accepted a pass from Kasperi Kapanen. Isles’ goalie Ilya Sorokin was in good position . . . until he wasn’t. The 36-year-old Carter required just two deft touches of the puck. Backhand, forehand, wrist shot, five hole, all before Sorokin could set himself and close his pads.
Less than two minutes into Game 6, the Penguins had a 1-0 lead on Carter’s fourth goal of the playoffs.
“Carts can still skate and, if you can still skate, you’re still in the game, you’re maybe ahead of the game,” said Carter’s former linemate, Scott Hartnell, by phone Thursday. “He’s so competitive, he’s got that winning nature about him and he has that great shot — he just know where the puck is going to be and how to score goals.”
On the morning after the Penguins were eliminated from the playoffs, Hartnell, the old Flyers’ nemesis, offered them some more hope for next season.
What Carter has done over the past seven weeks — scoring 13 goals in 20 games since the NHL trade deadline — can be sustained, albeit not at that prolific pace.
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“I definitely believe he has some mileage left,” said Hartnell, an analyst for the Flyers and NHL Network. “He takes care of his body, he wants to keep playing and he can still shoot the puck.”
It’s Hartnell’s final point that gives Penguins’ fans encouragement, assuming management keeps its core players intact and finds a goalie who won’t buckle under postseason pressure or make tape-to-tape passes to Josh Bailey.
Carter, a two-time Stanley Cup winner, was the Penguins’ best player in the six-game series. On a club often guilty of making one too many passes, he’s a straight-line forward who loves to shoot the puck. Since entering the league in the 2005-06 season, he ranks fifth in shots on goal (3,538) and 11th in goals scored (399).
The wiry 6-foot-3 Carter rarely takes slap shots and seldom overpowers goaltenders. He’s often described as having one of the game’s best wrist shots, but rarely talks about a craft first taught to him by his father, Jim, in the family’s London, Ontario driveway.
Before the Penguins clean out their lockers and a busy offseason unfurls, DK Pittsburgh Sports spoke to former Carter teammates, coaches and skills coaches about what makes his shot so troubling for goaltenders. He has one season remaining on his contract with a $5.27 million salary cap hit, and he sounds eager to give it another run with the Penguins.
“It’s a great group of guys, and I think up and down the lineup, it’s a team that can definitely compete for the Stanley Cup,” Carter said Wednesday night after the 5-3 loss to the Isles. “The hunger is still in that room.”
GETTY
Jeff Carter in Game 6 on Wednesday.
BALANCING ACT
Craig Hartsburg couldn’t understand how his 16-year-old Whippet of a forward kept scoring goals for the Soo Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League. Yes, Carter had been the No. 3 overall pick in the 2001 OHL Draft and the son of a former junior hockey player, yet the coach was mystified at how the youngster generated such power on his snap shots.
“He had good hockey sense and he was a very responsible two-way player,” said Hartsburg, a longtime NHL coach and assistant. “But his hands and wrists must have been so strong even back then because there wasn’t really much to him. He couldn’t have weighed 170 pounds.”
During his four junior-hockey seasons, in which he tallied 123 goals, talent evaluators started to discover what made Carter such a good pro prospect. He had tremendous balance on his skates.
Some fans might assume all NHL-caliber players have that trait, but it’s hardly the case.
“Great skaters are equally balanced on both sides of their body,” said shooting coach Tim Turk, who’s worked with four NHL franchises. “Some guys are left-foot dominant, others are right-foot dominant. Carts is comfortable on both. He gets his spine angle upright while maintaining a low center of gravity. His hips are back and his shoulders are forward.”
One NHL scout, who followed Carter’s junior career, said such technical harmony makes him a dangerous shooter regardless of where he finds himself in the offensive zone. It was perfectly illustrated on Carter’s overtime-winning goal against Martin Brodeur and the Devils in the 2012 Stanley Cup Final.
“With his balance, he can shoot a puck that’s ahead of him, behind him, way off to the side,” said the scout, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Carter doesn’t play for his team. “He’s going to find a way to get that shot off and have some zip on it.”
THAT’S A REACH
Former goalie Martin Biron didn’t see much of Carter during the forward’s impressive rookie season, but that changed after the Sabres traded him to Philadelphia in 2007.
Suddenly, Biron found himself facing Carter every day in Flyers’ practice and being baffled by wrist shots that fooled him time and again. Carter is not only tall, but he has arms on loan from former Pirates reliever Kent Tekulve.
“He deceives you with his shots,” said Biron, an MSG Network analyst for the Sabres. “He uses that long reach to his advantage.”
Pay attention to Carter when he prepares to shoot. Few skaters cradle pucks on their sticks further from their body. It allows him to change angles on his shots the way Tekulve did with his pitches.
“The angle that you have to play him at is not a body angle,” Biron said. “It’s definitely a puck angle and then he changes the angle really quickly because of his reach, and it means you have to adjust as a goalie. That’s how you make mistakes. He’s got that snap to his shot, and it always feels like it’s actually going a lot higher than it is. You will see him beat a lot of goalies under the glove and just above the pad because goalies are expecting the puck to go higher.”
Biron said Carter also is a savant when it comes to studying netminders’ tendencies. He recalls him beating Ryan Miller below his glove hand in a shootout and figured Carter had flubbed the shot.
“After the game, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s a good thing you fanned on your shot,’ ” Biron recalled. “Carts says, ‘No, that’s exactly what I was trying to do.’”
'THE SILENCER'
Carter stationed himself in the left faceoff circle awaiting a pass from Kings forward Tyler Toffoli in the 2013 Western Conference Final. Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford read the play perfectly, sliding to his right post in anticipation of Carter’s shot, but the puck sailed past him before he could set himself. This was no Alex Ovechkin blaster, the kind where he corkscrews himself into the ice on the follow through. There was no backswing. Carter snapped the puck on goal the moment it touched his stick.
“He has a great release,” Hartsburg said. “Some players need to settle a puck for a split second before they release it. Not him. He’s just always balanced, which allows him to have that quick release.”
Turk spends summers with NHL players and pro prospects, working on their shots. One of his favorite sayings is: “Less load, more explode.”
In other words, get your body positioned and prepared to shoot the puck before it arrives. Some players set up shots like they are loading a musket. Carter has a penchant for getting it off his stick instantaneously.
His arsenal also includes a “silencer,” Turk said. That’s when a player whips a shot on goal without any space between the stick and puck. Such shots don’t create a sound, and they are highly effective when goalies are trying to “hear the puck” being shot through a screen, Turk said.
“He’s up there with (Vladimir) Tarasenko and (Elias) Pettersson,” the shooting coach said. “There’s almost no load. His stick is already in a prepared position. It’s ready to go once he controls it.”
Blessed with good hand-eye coordination and poise, Carter also is among the league leaders in high-quality shots.
According to the Evolving Wild data base, which tracks stats back to the 2007-08 season, there are 857 NHL players who have played at least 4,000 minutes in that span. Carter ranks 12th in individual expected goals (ixG) per 60 minutes of play.
“A lot of guys can fire the puck, but they miss the net,” Hartsburg said. “With him, it’s on the net and with a purpose. If you miss the net, it’s around the wall and onto the other team’s stick. If it’s on goal, you can score or create rebounds. He probably learned that at a young age with his dad.”
HISTORY LESSON
Kenny McCudden is not only an NHL skills coach, but a hockey historian. His suburban Chicago home doubles as a sports museum, sticks and skates dating back a hundred years mounted on walls and placed in display cases.
McCudden sees Carter as a throwback in one aspect. He has the ability to shoot the puck in stride. Many players will begin to glide as they prepare their release. Carter does that as well, but sometimes he lets it go at full speed, adding to the velocity of the shot.
“He shoots on the fly, he shoots with speed,” said McCudden, who spent the past six seasons with the Blue Jackets. “In some ways, it’s a lost art. It’s the kind of shot you used to see with Mike Bossy, Guy Lafleur, Mark Messier and Glenn Anderson. Guys that come to mind today are Carter and Josh Anderson.”
Hartnell witnessed it up close for several seasons playing on a line with Carter and Joffrey Lupul.
“It’s a weird shot and weird can be good, right?” Hartnell said “It’s tricky to read for goaltenders. Carts can shoot the puck in mid-stride. A lot of guys have to stop moving their feet (and glide) to get their hands and arms and legs going for the shot. But he can just fire that puck in mid-stride.”
Such opportunities often come on odd-man breaks. Hartnell laughs at the memory of Carter flying down the ice on a 2-on-1 and not considering a cross-ice pass.
Many players like to set up a teammate in these instances even when the smart move would be shooting the puck. The selflessness, which sometimes borders on stubbornness, leads to countless face palms behind the bench and in the stands.
“He's definitely a good playmaker and passer, but one of the things that makes Carter so good is he knows he’s the best option,” the NHL scout said. “Sometimes, it’s good to be selfish.”
Hartnell recalls an occasion when he elected to shoot rather than making a risky cross-ice pass to Carter on a 2-on-1.
“I got back to the bench and he’s like, ‘Hey, Hartz, I’m open there, you gotta pass me the puck.’” Hartnell said. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know, (but) I’ve got 30 goals, too.’ Carts always wanted that puck, and that’s what you want from your best players.”
RING MASTER
Carter’s next goal will produce a milestone. He finished this regular season, in which he was clearly rejuvenated after the trade deadline, sitting one shy of 400.
It’s unrealistic to think Carter, who turns 37 on Jan. 1, will ever again hit the 30-goal mark. He last did it in the 2016-17 season when he played all 82 games. It would be interesting, however, if the coaching staff experimented with him on Sidney Crosby’s wing.
One thing Penguins’ fans know for sure: Carter isn’t Patrick Marleau 2.0.
“He had a really good two months there in Pittsburgh,” Hartnell said. “You give him the puck in space and he know what to do with it.”
Carter still has the wheels and savvy to kill penalties and the hands to take key faceoffs. He exited the playoffs winning 57.7 percent of his draws, fifth-best in the league.
What Carter wants more than anything from the game is what Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang already have — a third championship ring.
As the postmortem begins after another early playoff exit, there’s plenty of talk about the advanced age of the Penguins’ three stars. Not as much about the team’s oldest player. Not after that postseason performance.
Carter is still blazing a trail, his stick cocked ready to shoot, and the 23-year-old Beauvillier trying desperately to catch up.
