Discover Top Posts Tagged with #carson carels

CC...it was meant to be

How farm boy Carson Carels became the 2026 NHL Draft’s hottest prospect (thank u @majorjuniorhockey for sending me this!!)

Home for Carels is different than home for a lot of the other top prospects who surround him at Canada’s camp.

Home is Cypress River, Manitoba, which he describes as a “small town of about 50 people in the middle of nowhere,” one hour southeast of Brandon and two hours southwest of Winnipeg. His family’s farm is five minutes out of town and has passed through multiple generations of Carels now. His grandfather was one of 12 kids, and his dad, Ryan, has helped turn it into a family-run business that now has 500 head of cattle. They used to work in dairy, but these days they’re a growing beef operation.

In the offseason, he spends his days tagging cows, checking on the herd and cutting hay on the tractor. If the family needed him to, he could run the farm on his own — and will when his hockey career is over. He has helped birth cows in minus-10 Celsius temperatures in May. In season, he’s constantly calling home to check in on the farm and getting pictures from his dad and his mom, Stacy, of all of the new babies.

Earlier this year, when he had his first call with player development coach Bill Sullivan, who runs Sullivan Hockey doing video work with prospects, he’d already done 5-6 hours on the farm that day. They introduced themselves and did some video, and then Sullivan asked him what he was doing for the rest of the day. Carels answered matter-of-factly, “Well, I’ve got to go back out. What are you talking about?”

He’s quick to say there’s “for sure” a line between his game and the farm.

“That attitude and that edge comes from the farm because if you don’t have that, you might get ran over by a cow,” Carels said with a smile.

Lamb also sees it in his down-to-earth, respectful, hardworking nature and says, “a lot of who he is on and off the ice has been shaped by the farm upbringing.”

“It’s just how he lives, it’s how he was brought up, it’s how his family was brought up before him. He’s a kid in the summer who works. He gets up out of bed, and he’s a part of the operations. And he’s a hockey player also. He doesn’t forget about his workouts and his dedication to the game. I think all of that really frames him well,” Lamb said. “A lot of these kids nowadays don’t have to do that; all they do is work out.”

“There’s so much farm in him, and I see so much blue collar in his game,” Sullivan said. “You can see his upbringing stylistically in his game.”

#carson carels #archive #2026 nhl draft #prince george cougars #prospect watch