The Redemption Of Jeff Carter: Part One

“The icing”

For now all was well and good as the duo got selected to Team Canada for the 2005 World Junior tournament.  This was a team stacked with future Stanley Cup winning (and future Olympic Gold winning) players such as Sidney Crosby, Patrice Bergeron, Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf.  To add icing to this team’s cake, Canada also had Dion Phaneuf on its defensive line, who would later become the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs (whether Phaneuf becoming Captain of such a historic team as the Leafs turned out to be a good thing of a bad thing, I will leave it to Leaf fans to debate and decide).   Phantom teammate (and now bestie) Mike Richards was chosen to be Captain of the team and with Carter achieving 7 goals and 10 points in 6 games (plus contributions from the other star players of course) Canada won the Gold Medal for the first time in 7 years.  In 2014, this junior team would be considered by many to be the greatest junior team ever assembled.   Though sometimes unnoticed and uncredited, Jeff Carter was a large part of that now legendary team’s success.

Even with Carter’s scoring abilities, the one that was more noticed and praised was Mike Richards.  A natural born leader and winner, Richards was making waves for his brave head first approach to getting the job done on the ice and much success was coming from it.  In many hockey analyst’s eyes, Richards was the true potential star of the duo.  Carter they said, though indeed talented, was more of a one dimensional player, as in he could only score goals (yeah, like that’s a bad thing) while Richards was talented in many more aspects of the game than just offense (such as leadership, defense, face offs, special teams etc).   If any of this bothered Carter, no one could tell.  He was having fun, especially with his buddy “Richie” after they would unleash themselves on the helpless town after a tough, fought hockey game.  Their partying ways became legend in its own right (epic rager anyone?)

Carter, along with Richards would finally make the big boys team and joined the roster of the Philadelphia Flyers for 2005-06 season.  Through the years the duo would rise in the Flyers rankings with Richards becoming the team’s Captain in 2008 and Carter becoming a bona fide goal scorer in 2009 after getting 46 goals and 84 points.  In the 2010 playoffs, the duo helped the Flyers reach the Stanley Cup finals but ended up losing to the Chicago Blackhawks in 6 games.  On paper and from a far, the Flyers looked like a fast rising and hungry team, full of depth and with an honest and great potential of winning the Stanley Cup.  At the core of that team and its future stood Richards and Carter but what one couldn’t see from a far (unless you were a diehard Flyers fan and followed the behind the scenes news of the team) was that there was turmoil bubbling in the locker room.