"Run the Other Team Out of the Building": Carson Carels Wants Canada to Be Feared Again
Calgary's sixth-overall pick sat in a meeting room in Windsor, heard what Canada wants to be this year, and couldn't keep his legs still. Bronze wasn't good enough, and the tournament comes to Alberta on Boxing Day.
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Carson Carels sat in a meeting room in Windsor, Ontario this week and listened to Hockey Canada explain what this year’s team is supposed to be. He could not keep his legs still.
“In the meeting today my legs couldn’t stop shaking just hearing that,” he told TSN. “I was just really ready to get out there.”
What he had just heard was a plan to make Canada frightening again.
The mandate
Carels is Calgary’s sixth-overall pick from June, a left-shot defenceman out of Cypress River, Manitoba, and he is one of three Flames prospects on Canada’s roster at the World Junior Summer Showcase. Ask him what this group wants to be and there is no media training in the answer at all.
“I think we just got to get back to Canadian hockey,” he said. “I think just that hard hitting, and kind of run the other team out of the building, and kind of prove to them that Canada’s back on top, and kind of just have that fear that other countries kind of have had of us in the past.”
Read that again, because it is not a cliché when a teenager says it about a camp he arrived at yesterday. Run the other team out of the building. Not out-skate, not out-execute. Run them out of it.
He is clear it did not come from him, either. It came from the front of the room. “That’s kind of the culture that the coaches want, and I think all those guys can bring as well.”
The NHL's Carson Carels draft-year highlight compilation, footage via the WHL
Why they need it
Canada lost its semifinal 6-4 to Czechia at the last World Juniors in Minnesota, then beat Finland 6-3 for bronze. Carels was there for it, five games, one assist, an 18-year-old getting a limited look at a tournament that got away from his team.
He does not describe that as a learning experience in the soft sense.
“There was a lot to learn from that,” he said. “Just being a younger guy and seeing all those other guys, how they take adversity and kind of handle all that spotlight and everything like that, is kind of something that I’ve learned from. Also just that fire that we need to bring into this year.”
Third straight year Canada has lost to Czechia at this tournament. Bronze is a medal. It is also, for this program, a failure, and the players are not pretending otherwise.
The Boxing Day part
Here is the line that should get a Calgary reader’s attention, and it is the one Carels closed on.
“You want to go and play those games and kind of strike that fear already in summer, and kind of send a message now and wait till Boxing Day.”
Boxing Day is December 26, when the 2027 World Junior Championship opens in Edmonton and Red Deer. That is not a distant tournament in a neutral rink. A Flames first-rounder is talking about instilling fear at a world juniors held two and a half hours up Highway 2, in front of a building that will be hostile to him personally and delighted about it.
He is also not shy about where he expects to sit in the room this time. Last summer he was fighting to make the team. Now he is a returning player.
“I think I’m more confident and I can get a little bit bigger role here,” he said. “Everybody’s equal on that team and you kind of earn it all, but I think just being more comfortable and kind of being put in a little bit more of a leadership position, I can kind of bring the guys up.”
Then, immediately, the part that tells you more about him than the confidence does: “If I’m not playing my best game, I know I can be a big cheerleader up there too.”
Notebook
He did not arrive alone. Carels is at North Dakota this coming season, and two of his Fighting Hawks teammates are in Windsor with him: Flames prospect Cole Reschny and defenceman Keaton Verhoeff. He rattles them off as a unit when he talks about the returning group, which is what happens when your college teammates are also your national-team teammates.
The first day was a scramble. “We just all got off the plane and came straight to the rink and had some culture meetings,” he said. Camp runs to August 1 at the WFCU Centre, with Canada opening against Sweden.
He has done the big moment before. Last December, in his draft year, he ended one in overtime for Prince George.
Carson Carels scores the overtime winner for the Prince George Cougars, via the WHL
The white skates are real, and he is taking it. Carels turned up wearing white skates, which he picked up after asking about them back in Prince George. He says the look is “kind of a thing that was in the old times and coming back a little bit now,” and he is right: the California Golden Seals had trainers paint boots white as a gimmick in 1970-71, Sergei Fedorov made them iconic in Detroit in the late 1990s, and Mikko Rantanen and Mitch Marner wear white ones today. His stated inspiration is a Manitoba touchstone. “Dustin Byfuglien had a few pairs that had white on them, and obviously just watching him play on the Jets and everything like that was pretty special.”
The chirps arrived faster than the ice time. A teammate started in on him twenty minutes after he got to camp, and has not stopped. “He’s a character, and obviously I just got to take it and smile.”
An 18-year-old defenceman who wants to run teams out of buildings, wearing white skates, absorbing chirps about them with a shrug. Calgary could do considerably worse with a sixth-overall pick.
Quotes from Carson Carels' media availability at Canada's World Junior Summer Showcase camp, via TSN, July 27, 2026. Independent commentary. Not affiliated with the Calgary Flames, Hockey Canada, or the NHL.