Carter King figured this would feel very familiar.
And yet totally different.
King and the rest of the Flames rookie campers boarded a bus Friday, headed three hours up the QEII Highway for a showcase clash against the Edmonton Oilers’ own up-and-comers.
A product of Calgary’s minor hockey system, King probably knows every bump on that road.
“I’ve gone up to Edmonton so many times, playing in midget, playing in bantam, playing those teams up there,” King said, breaking into a wide smile. “You grow a little bit of rivalry early here.”
Sure do.
The significance of this latest Battle of Alberta, even if it was merely a still-summertime exhibition, wasn’t lost on King.
For the first time, the 24-year-old centre was donning the Flaming C logo in game action. He signed with his hometown team last spring as a college free agent, the cherry on top of a stellar stint with the NCAA’s Denver Pioneers. He won a pair of national championships while he was there.
“This is pretty surreal,” King said after checking in for rookie camp with the Flames. “If you take some perspective at it, it’s a really cool thing and not something I ever expected growing up playing hockey in Calgary. I just played to have fun and I’ve tried to carry that through my whole career.
“If there’s anything you want to do now, you want to have fun and enjoy the moment.”
But also, make the most of it.
On his trips around Alberta with the Calgary Bisons or the Calgary Buffaloes, King might have been daydreaming about opportunities just like this.
While he never has been billed as a can’t-miss kid, a characterization that still would be inaccurate, he has made a steady ascent, almost as if he’s driving west toward Banff or Lake Louise or his favourite summer hangout in Radium Hot Springs, B.C.
The Flames didn’t sign King simply because he’s a homegrown hopeful. The scouting report from his college career is that he’s strong on faceoffs, reliable on the penalty kill and capable of creating in the offensive zone.
He averaged nearly a point per game as a senior, combining 21 goals and 22 assists in 44 outings. It’s a big deal that the Pioneers, one of the NCAA’s powerhouse programs, stitched the ‘C’ on his sweater.
While King will almost assuredly start this season with the AHL’s Wranglers, his learning curve should be accelerated by his age and maturity. He might not be all that different from fellow college grad/centre Sam Morton, who was rewarded with an NHL callup at the end of his first professional campaign.
Morton, who turned 26 in July, is now the biggest challenger to Justin Kirkland for the role of Flames’ fourth-line pivot, with King as a long-shot candidate.
Asked what he’d learned during a three-game audition with the Wranglers last spring, King stressed the importance of what might seem like the small stuff.
“There’s a lot of detail to pro hockey,” he said. “Everything is down to the pinpoint of a system, a detail of the game, an aspect you can improve on.”
When it was mentioned that could be right in his wheelhouse, the local lefty beamed.
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“Absolutely,” agreed King, who also spent one winter with the BCHL’s Surrey Eagles. “I haven’t really been recruited as a top recruit wherever I have been. So, for me, working through a lineup and working up and earning more ice-time, it comes from mastering those details that a coach is looking for.
“It’s not passing up any opportunity. Even in practice, if you have the chance to go through a rep and really focus on a certain detail that you need to work on, change, whatever … It’s just having that detail in practice, in the games, to get those reps. And then you make it a custom, it’s back-of-your-hand, and all of a sudden you don’t have to think about it as much anymore.”
Almost sounds like a drive you’ve done countless times before.
When the Flames’ bus pulled up to Rogers Place on Friday evening, King was slated to skate between Sam Honzek and Aydar Suniev.
The two teams will rematch Sunday at the Saddledome. It’s a 4 p.m. start and tickets are only $10 with all proceeds to the Flames Foundation.
“It’s just about making that impression and showing that you belong and really trying to stand out and say, ‘Hey, I’m ready to make that step whenever you need me,’” King said. “I think that’s the biggest thing for me.”