Rick McConnell still remembers the first time he saw Carson Carels’ skates hit the sheet.
Back before the blue-line phenom was making waves in the Western Hockey League, before he was racking up minutes for Team Canada on the world juniors stage, Carels seemed like just another kid on McConnell’s under-17 squad at the Pilot Mound Hockey Academy, 45 minutes south of the defenceman’s hometown of Cypress River, Manitoba. But it took only a few spins for McConnell and the rest of his coaching staff to get the sense the 16-year-old might be something different.
“When he first hit the ice, his skating, it just stood out — we were kind of in awe,” the coach says. “His talent level was through the roof. His vision, his IQ, his shot, his skating. Just one of those kids that don't come around all the time.”
Carels spent three seasons in Pilot Mound. By the time he left, he was already something of a two-way force from the back end, posting 50 points in just 27 games in his final campaign for McConnell’s team.
For the coach, that production wasn’t the only evidence of Carels’ promise, it was the particular way in which he stacked those points.
“Every game, something stood out to me with him. He was exceptional,” McConnell says. “I just remember on the power play, always telling my forwards to keep their sticks on the ice, because you never knew when Carson would find players — he would see things that nobody else did and put that puck through seams. I don't know how he did it, but he did it.
“He had a knack for reading plays before they happened — Gretzky-like, to be very honest.”
So elite was Carels’ offensive vision, it raised the level of the teammates sharing the sheet with him.
“He could see open sticks and lanes that even on the bench sometimes we didn't see as coaches. And he could hit that guy right on the tape,” McConnell says. “It helped the rest of my team, because playing with a kid like that, they learn that you never know when the puck's going to be coming to you.”
Still, though Carels arrived at Pilot Mound a promising talent and made quick work of putting his high-end game on display, off the ice, he hadn’t yet found his footing as a leader in the locker room. But McConnell saw him eventually flourish there, too.
“He matured,” the coach says of the change he saw in Carels over his time at the academy. “He was growing up. He was just a young guy coming up his first year, so he was quiet when he first came. But by the end of the year, he took the team on his back. He was that type of player, and became a vocal leader.
“He became a role model.”
At the end of this week, the pride of Cypress River will see the fruits of that labour. Two years removed from his time at Pilot Mound, after a sterling pair of seasons with the WHL’s Prince George Cougars that saw him amass 111 points in 125 games, the 18-year-old enters the 2026 NHL Draft as the third-ranked North American skater on the board, and one of a group of elite defencemen likely to hear their names called in the draft’s top 10.
“He’s done so well in the sport, but you're not going to meet a more humble boy,” McConnell says. “He's so down-to-earth. He's excited for all this that's going on, but he’s so humble. It’s quite impressive, actually, with all the things he’s going through, how he can keep so humble. But he’s doing it.”
It comes naturally to the teenager, born from a life spent working on the family farm, just a few minutes outside of Cypress River. According to the defenceman, there are currently about a thousand cows and 150 goats roaming the Carels family’s land, and no shortage of other animals milling about.
Even amid the frenzy of the NHL Scouting Combine earlier this month, Carels’ mind drifted to his responsibilities back home.
“Right now, we’re calving cows, so it’s really busy back on the farm,” the teenager told the media in Buffalo. “Dad’s kind of wanting me to get back there and help out.”
The impact of being raised in the metronomic routine of farm life has been clear to those who’ve shared a bench with the defenceman, most evident in his unceasing drive, his unassuming work ethic.
“I've had lots of good hockey players we’ve coached, but this kid was just, he worked so hard at everything he did. He never came up short. He was always giving 110 per cent,” McConnell says. “To see where he’s gone with the game is not surprising at all. You never know what's going to happen in the future when they’re young — but it was all there.
“It was just a matter of how hard he was going to work, and if he was going to stick to it. And obviously he has.”
Beyond instilling in him the tangible value of hard day’s work, life on the farm also shifted Carels perspective on the game, and everything beyond, more fundamentally.
“It shaped me and who I am — there’s a lot of losses in farming,” Carels said in Buffalo earlier this month. “I think, just, you do everything you can for an animal and sometimes you still end up losing it. That taught me a lot. To just forget about the bad shifts and forget about all that, because there’s bigger things in life that happen. I think that’s kind of the main thing.”
The blue-chip prospect plans to spend draft day not in Buffalo at the KeyBank Center with the rest of the top prospects, but back home in Manitoba. On the farm. A sign of the foundational nature of his relationship to the place, to his family.
And rest assured, the Manitoba hockey community’s affinity for the defenceman is just as strong as his passion for it. McConnell understands the depth of the Carels family’s connection to that community as well as anyone — the veteran bench boss coached Carels’ father, Ryan, when he was a young teenaged hopeful himself, and coached alongside Carels’ uncle, Danny, at Pilot Mound.
As June 26 approaches, McConnell says, the prospect’s future has been the talk of the town.
“It’s very exciting. There’s a lot of chatter. All the kids in our school, his ex-teammates, just the communities, Cypress River — everybody’s pulling for him,” McConnell says. “Especially now, everyone’s talking, wondering where he’s going to go. And being Manitoba, everyone’s hoping he can maybe get drafted by the Jets.”
Winnipeg, selecting at No. 8 overall, might just have a shot at the blue-chip defender. But Carels has raised his ceiling so high over the past few seasons, his home province’s big-league team might not get the chance. Regardless of when he hears his name called come Friday, one thing is certain: his next club is sure to get a new crowd of fans out west in Manitoba.
“It’s really exciting around here, just to see everybody talking about it, to see Carels jerseys and hats,” McConnell says. “They all followed Prince George, but when he made Team Canada, that was huge — we had several families that went down to watch him play [at the World Juniors in Minnesota].
“So, this weekend, it’s going to be really exciting. Everyone’s going to be glued to the TV to see where he goes. And then I’m sure you're probably going to see a lot of jerseys, wherever he gets selected.”
