BOSTON – TD Garden became an unknowingly important place for Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson eight months ago.
The 20-year-old Swede played his only game with Team Sweden in the 4 Nations Face-Off on Feb. 17 at the home of the Boston Bruins, as the Tre Kronor beat Team USA, 2-1. Carlsson played just 14:37 and registered one shot in the game, but the experience propelled him forward into the stretch run with Anaheim.
The Ducks’ first game out of the 4 Nations break just happened to be in Boston five days later, and after his teammates met up with him to restart their NHL campaign, Carlsson banged home an overtime-winning slapshot to announce his game had taken a step forward.
After producing just 19 points through his first 48 games of last season, Carlsson stormed out of the break with 26 points in just 28 games. It was a surge that carried Carlsson throughout his offseason training.
“I didn’t play that much (at 4 Nations), but that one game was really high speed,” Carlsson said at Ducks practice in Boston on Wednesday. “The fastest game I ever played in my career, so now the game was slowing down I feel like for the rest of the season and then before the start of this season too. It’s something that I take with me with confidence for this season as well.”
Those are now the hallmarks of the 2023 No. 2 overall pick’s game, as he begins to fully embrace the role as the Anaheim Ducks’ No. 1 centerman.
“Speed or maybe hungriness a little bit too if that’s the word,” Carlsson said on what to attribute his strong start to this season. “Just really hungry to win. That’s probably why.”
Through seven games, Carlsson has put up a team-high eight points–only tied by Mikael Granlund after his five-point night in Boston on Thursday–while averaging nearly 19 minutes per night. Carlsson picked up one assist back in TD Garden.
Carlsson is being more commanding of the puck and on the puck, averaging three shots per game this season (21 shots in seven games). He averaged 1.5 shots per game last season (114 in 76 games) and 1.98 shots per game as a rookie (109 in 55 games).
“He wants to puck all the time now,” Alex Killorn, Carlsson’s longest-serving linemate over the last two seasons, said on Thursday. “I think that’s a guy you want to want to have the puck, especially through the neutral zone. It’s like any other player when you’re scoring and you’re producing, you gain confidence through that, and I think you could tell he’s playing confident ways now.”
While certainly not the same goals, Carlsson’s three goals have been scored with similar style: straight ahead and downhill.
Carlsson’s first goal was electric in overtime in San Jose, as he stripped Macklin Celebrini at the Ducks’ blueline and sprinted down ice to wrist home the game-winner. His second goal against Carolina came with that signature neutral-zone speed, where Killorn got the puck to him in space to laser in Anaheim’s only goal that night.
His latest came in Nashville, and even without that head of steam through center ice, Carlsson charged the netfront to pop in a rebound.
“He’s playing smooth. He’s not playing timid,” Cutter Gauthier said last week. “He’s confident skating with the puck through the neutral zone. When he’s at his best, he’s slicing through the neutral zone creating odd-man rushes and capitalizing.”
It’s not just singular plays, either.
No matter his linemates–Killorn swapped in for Troy Terry late in the second game of the season, and Gauthier tapped in while Chris Kreider has missed the last two games with an illness–Carlsson is driving play, more now than in either of the previous two seasons.
According to MoneyPuck, in all situations with Carlsson on the ice, the Ducks are earning 64% of the shot attempts (up from 53% last season and 56% two seasons ago) and 59.9% of the expected goals (51.1% last season and 53.8% two seasons ago).
It’s Carlsson that helped Kreider fit in on the ice so well in his new surroundings. Carlsson has assisted on all four of the former Rangers’ goals with the Ducks, including three primary assists.
“It makes my job easier,” Kreider said. “Just try to keep a strong bottom hand.”
In addition to taking hold of his mantle on the ice, Carlsson is taking hold of a leadership position in the Ducks’ locker room.
When Ryan Strome, an alternate captain last season, missed the season opener due to injury, there was a question of who would assume one the A’s in the meantime. Alongside captain Radko Gudas and previous alternate Killorn, it was Carlsson with the other A on his sweater in Seattle on Oct. 9.
However, this is not a “meantime” thing for Ducks coach Joel Quenneville, who is charging the young core with leadership positions. Carlsson, Jackson LaCombe and Mason McTavish are all part of the rotating alternate captains to open the season.
“We wanted some of our younger guys to assume some of the responsibility in that area,” Quenneville said at the home opener. “I think that the franchise is at that point where younger guys got to be key guys, and they got to absorb some of the leadership responsibility, and they’re at that stage of their career where you know, that next step is it’s their team. Let’s go.”
Carlsson and Killorn will wear the A’s on the road in the first half of the season, with LaCombe and McTavish will rock the sweater letters at home. They will switch home and road responsibilities in the second half of the year.
With Carlsson’s contract up for renewal as a restricted free agent at the end of the season, this is a huge campaign for the 20-year-old and Anaheim.
His size, speed and skill have drawn comparisons to Aleksander Barkov, Anze Kopitar and Evgeni Malkin, but when Malkin and the Penguins came to town last week, Gudas thought there was no comparison between Carlsson and the Russian big man.
“I don’t know if I would really compare to him,” Gudas said. “I think Leo’s gonna be a lot better.”