Carson Soucy waits patiently for call-up from Wild

Xcel Energy Center, the home of the Minnesota Wild, will host the National Collegiate Hockey Conference's (NCHC) Frozen Faceoff championship tournament March 22-23, 2019. Leading up to the Frozen Faceoff, Wild.com will feature different aspects of the NCHC related to the Wild and Xcel Energy Center. More information, including tickets, is available at the Xcel Energy Center's Frozen Faceoff page.
As the final seconds ticked off the Xcel Energy Center clock last April and Minnesota Duluth earned its second national championship with a 2-1 win over Notre Dame, Carson Soucy made his way down from his seat in the crowd and headed for the victors' locker room.
A year earlier, Soucy was a senior defenseman on a Bulldogs team that lost in the NCAA title game to Denver. Now, as fate would have it, Soucy, a 2013 fifth-round draft pick of the Wild, was in town after being recalled from Iowa and making his NHL debut only days earlier. Among the players he celebrated with was his cousin, senior forward Parker Mackay, who is the Bulldogs' captain this season.
With a flurry of good fortune, Minnesota had put Soucy in a happy state.
Life was - and is - indeed good for the self-described late bloomer from tiny Irma, Alberta (pop. 521). Soucy had no reason to believe that an NHL career was even a remote possibility until a major growth spurt around the age of 17 began to change things.

At 18 he thought that, at the very least, signing with Minnesota Duluth would ensure that he could at least continue playing hockey for four more years. Being drafted by the Wild opened his eyes to a possible pro career.
Soucy signed a two-year contract with the Wild after his Duluth career ended, and a year later he was on the ice at the X due to injuries along the Wild's blueline.
"It's something you work for your whole life," Soucy said of his NHL debut, "so to have it happen last year was pretty special. Especially having family in town to see it. I found out a couple days earlier, so it gave my family time to get there. And some friends from college were able to be there, too."
To make things even better, the Wild's opponent was Edmonton, so the game was broadcast in his hometown, where friends and family gathered at the local golf course for a viewing party.
The call-up, which included three regular-season games and four more in the playoffs, labeled Soucy as a player to watch among Wild fans. Another season of development has seen the 24-year-old left-handed defenseman take his game to the next level - if not yet back to the NHL. But it appears to be only a matter of time.
First-year Iowa coach Tim Army enthusiastically and emphatically endorsed the 6-foot-5, 210-pound Soucy as a player destined for the NHL.
"There's too much size, there's too much mobility, puck sense, skill, physicality," Army said. "There's a lot there. And add to that the fact that he's a quality person and a great teammate. The guys love him."
Soucy has emerged as a leader in Iowa on and off the ice. Army uses him in all situations; he kills penalties, plays a lot of five-on-five and hovers in front of the opponents' net when Iowa pulls its goalie.
"He brings a lot to our lineup," Army said "He's a big man with good range, he's mobile, he's got good instincts and he's aggressive. He closes on people really fast because he is so long and so physical, so he's really hard to play against. He also has the ability to pull away from people, which allows us to get out of our zone and helps with our transition game."
The coach is clearly a believer, which is a far cry from where things were when the two first connected.
Army admits he was underwhelmed when Soucy went through what the coach called a sluggish training camp. Soucy was a healthy scratch from the lineup early in the season. Asked why he thought Soucy got off to such a bad start, Army said he didn't know. But he has his suspicions.
"Sometimes as a young player, you come in and think you don't have to put the work in," Army said. "Your expectation can be is that you are going to make the [NHL] team out of camp, so you let your foot off the gas a little bit.
"So you're not sharp, and you struggle a little bit because everyone else is at the top of his game. Then your confidence wanes a little bit. We used the resources that we could - video, conversations - to get him back on track.
"When he came back his game really started to evolve."
Said Soucy: "This has been a little bit of a learning year for me. I'm trying to be more consistent, and over the past couple of months I feel I have improved a lot."
The Iowa coaching staff is working with Soucy to add a little "cushion" to his game. He can get a little over-anxious at times, Army said, and gets on top of the play too quickly. On defense, he can go at the puck carrier to quickly on a two-on-one, which makes the pass to an open man too easy to complete. On offense, when he joins the rush, he needs to back off a little at times and be the third layer of the attack.
"I'd rather have someone who is too aggressive than someone who is not aggressive," Army said. "He's getting it. He watches and he learns."
Injuries along the blueline have plagued the Wild again this season. This time around the team brought in some veterans from outside the organization in an attempt to fill the void. Army cautioned observers not to read too much into that.
He pointed out that Wild General Manager Paul Fenton and assistant GM Tom Kurvers believe in allowing young players to grow as players and as individuals in Iowa, so that when they are called up to Minnesota they are ready to make an impact.
"It wasn't a reflection of what management thinks we have here," Army said. "Management is happy with what we have; they just want them to continue to develop in this environment."