David Carle has spent nearly his entire adulthood in Denver, but he is Alaska is still in his blood.
Yet during his 15 years as a student-assistant, assistant coach and now head coach of the Pioneers hockey program, he has only led the bench in his home state once and never in his hometown of Anchorage.
He will finally get that chance this weekend as the University of Denver begins its 2024-25 season in America’s Last Frontier against the Alaska Anchorage Seawolves.
“I’m excited to be with the guys on this trip and get to Anchorage,” said Carle. “It’s going to be fun. I was able to get up there earlier this summer; I still have family and friends up there, so I’m looking forward to it.”
This will be the second consecutive season where DU opens the new campaign in Alaska, as the squad also began 2023-24 in the interior of the 49th state by taking on the Alaska Fairbanks Nanooks. Carle wasn’t in attendance for that series as he was back in Denver awaiting the birth of their family’s second child, but he was on the Pioneers’ previous trip up north when they kicked off the 2019-20 campaign also in Fairbanks.
Carle has only been in Anchorage once since first arriving in Denver in 2008 as a then-recruited defenseman, and that was as a student-assistant coach as an upperclassman during the 2010-11 or 2011-12 season. He says he doesn’t recall the exact year of those games, but he does remember that then-head coach George Gwozdecky allowed him to come down from the press box and onto the bench for the third period of the Saturday finale in his hometown.
Those two instances have been the only Alaska homecoming for Carle during his time as a Pioneer.
A lot has happened since he left home at age 15 to attend Shattuck-St. Mary’s Prep School in Faribault, Minnesota. Following the four-year stint as a DU student-assistant, Carle spent a year and a half with the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers under now-Detroit Red Wings head coach Derek Lalonde before returning to his alma mater as an assistant coach for Jim Montgomery midway through 2013-14.
He has held the reins of the Pioneers program as the Richard and Kitzia Goodman Hockey Head Coach since 2018-19, which at the time made him the youngest coach in NCAA hockey at age 28.
Set to turn 35 years old next month, Carle has now graduated to be the second-youngest in the college game but few have accomplished in their career what he has already in just six years—five Gold Pan trophies, two Penrose Cups, an NCHC Frozen Faceoff title, three Frozen Four appearances and two national championships on his resume.
He also led the United States to a gold medal at the 2024 IIHF World Junior Championship and will guide his country again at the 2025 under-20 tournament in December and January in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
“I say to the World Junior guys, I view myself as a kid from Alaska and the opportunity to represent our country on this stage and represent this community, I think is something that my brothers and I have always been grounded to,” Carle said. “I’m not from Denver, [Matt Carle] is not from Minnesota—where he is now. We’re from Anchorage, and we have a lot of pride being from here.”
The Carle brothers grew up skating on the indoor and outdoor rinks throughout the city and watching the Seawolves play on the weekend further shaped their love for the sport.
“I think you cheer for Alaska hockey. There are a lot of good players,” Carle said. “I think one of the reasons why we got into the game was because of the Seawolves and our parents had season tickets. We went to many Friday and Saturday night games, and that was our exposure to the WCHA and getting to watch Denver, Minnesota and North Dakota. We enjoyed it as kids a lot.”
Being a college hockey program in Alaska certainly has its challenges. The Seawolves and Nanooks are the furthest north and west among all NCAA squads and both are currently NCAA independents with no conference affiliation, which can make scheduling opponents and filling out a 34-game season difficult.
Alaska Anchorage was especially hit hard during COVID-19 and the budget issues that the athletic department was dealing with before and during the 2020 Pandemic. After being on life support and on pause for two years, the Seawolves are now set for their third season back in action and look to build upon a 2023-24 campaign where they went 15-17-2 and finished the year on a 9-3-0 run.
“It’s great to see the program back,” Carle said. “It was tough to see that it had to go through a dormant period, but I think (UAA coach) Matt Shasby is doing a really good job and I hope for the sake of the community it sticks long term.”
Carle says Alaska Anchorage will continue to be on Denver’s schedule in the future as a non-conference opponent, which might serve two purposes. It will continue to give UAA a quality opponent to play against and might lead to another Alaska homecoming in the future for Carle and his Pioneers.
“I follow the program, care about the program up here,” Carle said of UAA hockey. “I think it’s great to make sure that we’re reciprocating trips up here and trying to help the Anchorage program as much as we can and the minor role that we can play.”
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