Jeff Carter, among London's most successful pro athletes, retires
London native Jeff Carter, whose hockey career is among the most decorated by any professional athlete in the city's history, has retired after 19 NHL seasons.
Wednesday night, the 39-yearold who grew up in east London, played his final game, scoring a goal for the Pittsburgh Penguins as the team's season ended without a berth in the playoffs, where Carter did some of his finest work over the last two decades.
“Yeah, that was it,” Carter told the Pittsburgh Post-gazette moments after the road game, attended by his wife and kids and former L.A. teammate Jonathan Quick. “I kind of knew coming in at the start of the year that this would probably be it. And as it went on, it was time.”
It was the least productive season of his NHL career — 15 points in 72 games — but takes nothing away from a gilded run:
■ First-round pick (11th overall) to Philadelphia in 2003
■ Two Stanley Cup championships with the Los Angeles Kings (2012, 2014)
■ Olympic gold with Canada at the 2014 Winter Games
■ 1,321 career NHL games played and an estimated $76 million in career earnings
Said teammate Sidney Crosby following Wednesday's game: “He's just a winner.”
Carter grew up on Cayuga Court and played minor hockey for the London Junior Knights and then the Elgin-middlesex Chiefs before leaving home to play for the Ontario Hockey League's Soo Greyhounds. In a 2003 interview, he spoke with The Free Press about playing in a showcase game for NHL draft prospects and the nerves he felt seeing so many bigleague executives in the stands.
“I saw them all sitting up in the corner. It was a sea of black. Everybody in black suits,” Carter said. “But after a couple of shifts you settle down. This has really been exciting. It's nerve-racking but definitely exciting.”
Among his key skills as a prospect was winning faceoffs, which at the time was credited to his dad Jim, who played for the Oshawa Generals and spent hours in the family basement practising with his son.