Bruins rookie Brandon Carlo playing beyond his years

BOSTON -- The hallway in Pagliuca's is a cramped, narrow passageway that leads to the restrooms. On the wall of the restaurant, with maybe a couple of centimeters between them, are photographs of current and former stars of various Massachusetts teams, among them former Boston Bruins defenseman Nick Boynton and former New England Patriots linebacker Willie McGinest.

There's also an autographed picture of Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chara. It was a photograph that, on a youth team trip during the 2012-13 season, coach Angelo Ricci pointed out to one of his players, a tall, gangly defenseman. Ricci looked at Brandon Carlo and said, as he recalled recently, "If you keep working hard, your picture could be on this wall."
It was, perhaps, an improbable statement, given where Carlo had started.
His was a football family, and by the time the Jordans moved next door in 2001, the 4-year-old had yet to set his sights on the ice. Hal and Maureen Jordan, whose son Haden was the same age, would help change that, opening up a world and a future for Carlo.

The families lived in a cul de sac in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a space soon taken over by 5- and 6-year-olds playing hockey in the streets and driveways. Haden would be out there, and Maureen would be supervising.
Brandon soon joined them, though it didn't necessarily seem like he would make it at the start, especially after his first in-line skating game, his first time in actual, organized competition.
"My kid is zipping around everywhere," Hal Jordan said. "Brandon stood there the whole game. He never moved. He just went right to center ice and didn't move the whole game. It was unbelievable.
"He did not move for 40 minutes. That's the truth. He just stood there. The play was going by him, back and forth, and his dad was like, 'Looks like we're going to have to try a different sport. This one isn't for him.'"
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The news broke on the afternoon of June 26, 2015: Dougie Hamilton, the Bruins' No. 1 defenseman of the future, had been traded to the Calgary Flames. Hamilton was going to become a restricted free agent in five days and the Bruins did what they believed they had to by trading him.
Hours later they would begin a remake of the future of their defense, though not in exactly the way originally intended. New general manager Don Sweeney had planned to use what ended up being three picks in the first round of the 2015 NHL Draft to trade up and select one of three elite defensemen: Noah Hanifin, Ivan Provorov or Zach Werenski. But the prices were too high, so Sweeney had to start his revamp with what he had.
"Three of those players are playing and making an impact, so we were right and so were those teams," Sweeney said. "I just wasn't willing to pay the price that was being asked. So we set the course in motion that we were going to be committed to filling in some areas that [had been identified]."
From 2008-14 the Bruins had selected two defensemen in the top two rounds of the draft, Hamilton at No. 9 in 2011 and Linus Arnesson at No. 60 in 2013. That would change in 2015, when the Bruins took Jakub Zboril at No. 13 and used second-round picks on Carlo (No. 37) and Jeremy Lauzon (No. 52), selecting more defensemen in the first two rounds of the draft than they had in the previous seven drafts combined. In 2016, the Bruins selected two more defenseman in the first two rounds: Charlie McAvoy with the No. 14 pick and Ryan Lindgren (No. 49).

Carlo is the first to reach the NHL.
When the 2016-17 season started, concerns about the Bruins focused mostly on the defense. It was assumed that they'd be fine in goal, where Tuukka Rask was due for a bounce-back season; fine on offense, where they boasted two-thirds of the most dynamic line on the best team in the World Cup of Hockey 2016, center Patrice Bergeron and left wing Brad Marchand, plus breakout candidate David Pastrnak and free agent signing David Backes.
But the defense? It was hard to have much confidence in it.
Thirty-two games into the season, the Bruins are in the top third in the NHL, with opponents averaging 2.39 goals per game entering Thursday. They have been better than anticipated in part because of Carlo.
"He's been good," coach Claude Julien said. "You still see him make mistakes occasionally but he's working hard to correct them. But at the same time I've seen a lot more good things from Brandon than things he needs to get better at.
"He'll get better from those situations. When a guy makes mistakes you like to see him work hard to try and correct them. That's what he does."
Carlo was 19 when he made his NHL debut (he turned 20 on Nov. 26) and had seven games of professional experience, all with Providence of the American Hockey League late last season. But so far he's been reliable in the defensive zone, demonstrating beyond-his-years stick work, focus and steadiness. And more than anything, the 6-foot-5 203-pound rookie is known for his skating, his ability to close quickly on opponents, to track them down and shut them down with his reach.

It had started not long after that first ill-fated inline game, the one in which 4-year-old Carlo stood rooted to his spot. He made it perhaps 30 or 40 feet the next game. But by later that season things had changed.
"I've never seen anything like it in my life," Hal Jordan said. "I've probably coached 1,500 kids and he was the most natural skater I've ever seen in my life. I don't think he's taken a skating lesson to this day. He just picked up skating. He had to work on stickhandling and shooting and positional play and passing [but] he had skating down pat. It was insane."
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This is not exactly where Carlo believed he would be at this point.
"I would say that even for myself I've exceeded the expectations that I had," he said. "I couldn't have imagined a better start for myself here. I feel like it just is proving to myself more and more each and every night that I can play in this League and belong in this League."
He had come into the season trying to be realistic about his NHL chances as a teenage defensemen. But so far it's gone better than anyone could have anticipated.
"It's been a bit of a surprise for him to be able to probably bite off and handle this much early on, but that's OK," Sweeney said. "In our eyes, we look at it and say the opportunity was there and he's taken advantage of it."

He has taken particular advantage of being paired with Chara, something that has been integral to his development, one mammoth defenseman alongside another, youth and experience and drive and knowledge mixing to yield a partnership that has worked for each.
"At first it was a little bit surreal, but now I'm just at the point where I go out there and I know that I have to do my job," Carlo said. "I take pride in going against those top lines and having the opportunity to shut them down. At first it was pretty crazy looking across the ice, seeing [Jaromir] Jagr or [Steven] Stamkos. But those nerves have settled a little bit."
Playing with Chara has been a huge help to his development.
"[Chara] has been tremendous for him," Julien said. "I think you have to credit [Chara] for giving him that kind of confidence to have a good start. At the same time you also have to credit Brandon for giving [Chara] maybe the energy, the life of a young player being with him."
Together they've helped bolster a team that often has struggled to score. It has provided the jump that Chara has needed, the start that Carlo has needed, the stability the Bruins have needed.
Two weeks ago the Carlo family traveled to Boston. Ricci, Carlo's under-16 coach, received a text message from Angie, Carlo's mother, letting him know that they had gone back to Pagliuca's, the brick-and-tomato-sauce-laden restaurant in the North End of Boston that had hosted the team four years ago.
The same photographs that were on the walls then still are there, the same stars and role players, the same fading autographs. One more is on the way. Soon Carlo will be up there next to Chara, just as Ricci said he would.