Six Hundo For Hagelin - Caps left wing Carl Hagelin skates in his 600th NHL game today in Minnesota, a bit more than eight years after he made his NHL debut with the New York Rangers in Washington on Nov. 25, 2011.
"It's a little different," says Hagelin on the occasion of his 600th game. "You think back to your first game, you just want to go out there and play a couple minutes and get that first NHL game out of the way, which was such a cool experience especially going up against Washington - they had Ovechkin -- I remember that was big for me, playing against him.
"Over the last eight or nine years, a lot has happened in my life. It's been a lot of success on the ice, and now I have a family, I have a daughter, so I'm definitely a different person than I was back then. But I think my mindset is still the same, I still feel young and it's a great league to be a part of, and I'm hoping for many more."
Born and raised in Sweden, Hagelin took a different route to the NHL than most of his countrymen. Rather than opting to play pro in Sweden or to play junior hockey there or in North America, he chose to go to U. of Michigan, where he excelled on and off the ice for four years. Once his career as a Wolverine was over, the sixth-round draft pick needed only 17 games worth of AHL seasoning, and he was ready for his first taste of the NHL. Unlike many, he has been here ever since.
"A lot of my friends and especially my brother," says Hagelin, "they turned pro back home pretty early, and then they got stuck in between playing on the elite league team and the junior team, and they didn't really develop a whole lot. When the college opportunity came up by, I jumped on it right away; my dad and my sister went to college in the U.S., so it wasn't completely new to me. School came pretty easy as well, so I thought it'd be a great opportunity to go over and play hockey and get a degree at the same time, because you can't do that back home in Sweden.
"I think those four years helped me a lot, to develop as a person being around the American culture and everything. So once I once I signed my first pro contract, it wasn't that big of a jump I guess, especially socially and when it comes to the culture. Being around a bunch of other drafted guys and good hockey players at Michigan for four years definitely helped me make that transition very, very seamless."
Since entering the league that season, Hagelin has appeared in 128 Stanley Cup Playoff games, more than any player in the league during that span. He has played on two Cup champion teams in Pittsburgh in 2016 and 2017, and he advanced to the Cup Final Series with the Rangers in 2014. Hagelin's teams have made the playoffs every season he has been in the league, and the 2018-19 Caps were the first team he was on that did not advance past the first round of the postseason tournament.
"Yeah, I think that's great," says Hagelin. "I'm a guy who takes pride in what I do on the ice and always put the team first, and you love being on winning teams. That's what it comes down to and that's always been the case for me ever since I was a kid. I just had that competitiveness to me that I always wanted to win.
"In college, we finished second my senior year, and it was actually in this building [Xcel Energy Center], too. We lost in overtime and that was it for college, and I've had opportunity now to go on some deep playoff runs and win a couple of Stanley Cups. That's what I play for and you hope that's what everyone around you plays for as well. This is a great team that has a chance to do that, and that was one of the reasons I signed here during the summer."
