According to Elliotte Friedman, the Toronto Maple Leafs are seriously interested in University of Denver head coach David Carle.
Carle, long viewed as one of the best hockey coaches outside of the NHL, has been considered for pro jobs the past couple of offseasons but has remained in Denver. It remains to be seen if he would accept the Maple Leafs’ job if offered, but the reports of serious interest should not be taken lightly.
What does Carle bring to the table as a coach? And what pitch could the Maple Leafs make to him? We’ll investigate today.
Background
David Carle was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, the middle child of three boys. His older brother, Matt, left Alaska to play with the USNTDP before becoming a second-round pick by San Jose in 2003. Matt became a star at the University of Denver, winning back-to-back national titles in 2004 and 2005 before capturing the Hobey Baker in 2006 as the top player in college hockey. Afterward, Matt went pro, beginning with San Jose before being traded to Tampa Bay in the Dan Boyle trade. His best years came in Philadelphia, followed by a return to Tampa, where he played in two Stanley Cup Finals before retiring.
David took a different route, playing at the prestigious Shattuck St. Mary’s boarding school in Minnesota through the conclusion of his HS career. David was expected to be selected in the 2008 NHL Draft around the same place that Matt was, with a plan to follow in Matt’s footsteps with a playing career on the blue line at Denver. However, while preparing for the draft, doctors noticed that David had an irregular heart condition, one that could become life-threatening if he continued his hockey career.
Just like that, at age 18, David Carle’s playing career was over. Carle was actually drafted at the tail end of the seventh round, a courtesy by Tampa Bay owner Oren Koules, whose son was a teammate of Carle’s.
As a footnote about Carle’s family, the youngest brother, Alex, was not nearly as talented but did have a four-year college hockey career at Merrimack.
David never got to play college hockey like his brothers, immediately setting him on track for a coaching career. Denver honored the scholarship they owed to Carle, and he began as a student coach, learning and training during his undergraduate years. Carle learned enough during that trial period to be ready to take on an assistant role with Green Bay in the USHL after graduating. He didn’t last long there, though, because Denver head coach Jim Montgomery offered Carle a full-time assistant coaching position on the staff.
Montgomery was not the coach under whom Carle had learned as a student. That was George Gwozdecky, who was controversially fired for failing to win in the NCAA Tournament, despite gobs of success in the regular season and multiple national titles in the past. Gwozdecky was replaced by Montgomery, who had the mandate to win in the big dance. After one season at the helm, Montgomery brought Carle on board as a young assistant, an exceptional opportunity to cut his teeth.
NCAA Tournament success beyond Gwozdecky’s achievements did not initially come to Montgomery, but in his third year, he got Denver back to the Frozen Four. Then, in his fourth season, he captured another national title for the Pioneers. NHL interest came soon after for Montgomery, who didn’t have any particular attachment to the Denver program. After his fifth season, in 2018, the Dallas Stars hired Montgomery to take over behind the bench. With a coaching vacancy, Denver didn’t feel the need for a detailed search and instead just went with Carle as an in-house replacement. After all, he’d been on staff in some capacity for eight of the past 10 years, studying under two different national title-winning coaches.
The coaching résumé
On May 25, 2018, David Carle was named head coach of the Denver Pioneers. Just 28 years old, he was one of the youngest coaches to ever take over a major college hockey program. If anyone thought it risky at the time, he quickly proved otherwise.
Carle got Denver right back to the Frozen Four in 2018-19 during his first year on the job, and then had the team ranked in the top 10 in 2019-20 when the season prematurely ended due to COVID-19. The following season, shortened again by the pandemic and irregularly scheduled, is the only blip Carle has experienced at Denver. His team was subpar in the grueling NCHC at 9-12-1, and with no non-conference games to bolster the resume, it missed the NCAA Tournament, finishing 10-13-1 overall.
Admittedly, it was a bizarre season in college hockey. Denver wasn’t the only big program to experience a bad season, and multiple usually terrible programs were randomly good (Bemidji St and Lake Superior St stand out). It’s probably best to disregard that season; if you were down on Carle after that strange year, it would be bad timing on your part. The post-pandemic world of college hockey, starting in 2021-22, was the beginning of Denver’s reign of glory.
Over the past five seasons, Carle’s Denver team has never once finished outside the top three in the NCHC, which is probably college hockey’s strongest conference. It’s home to North Dakota, Western Michigan, and Minnesota-Duluth, three excellent programs that play pro-style games and blend experience with talent. Sitting consistently atop that league, winning the regular season crown twice, is probably the most reliable estimate of Carle’s coaching acumen.
But of course, it’s his abilities in the notoriously random single-elimination NCAA Hockey Tournament that Carle hangs his hat on as a coach. In the past five seasons, Carle’s Denver squad has claimed three national championships and made the Frozen Four four times. His record as a coach in that event is 14-2. The two times he didn’t win the national title: one instance of getting upset in the first round — proving his team isn’t completely invincible from the randomness that plagues this tournament — and a season where the Pioneers upset an incredible Boston College team (featuring Ryan Leonard, Gabe Perreault, James Hagans, Jacob Fowler) and made the Frozen Four before succumbing to Western Michigan.
The level of success Carle has enjoyed in the NCAA Tournament is astounding, with luck an indisputable part of it. There is no question that Denver has been a top-five program in the country over the past half-decade, but it’s hard to come up with a logical reason why they have three national titles, while Michigan, Michigan State, BC, North Dakota, and Minnesota have zero over that span. The Pioneers’ success in the NCAA Tournament defies everything we know about college hockey; they haven’t been so much better than the competition in the regular season that they should be invincible in the tourney.
Especially when the numbers include an astounding 8-1 record in one-goal games over the past five tournaments, not to mention a two-goal win in which Denver scored an empty-netter with four seconds left. Carle’s team is also 3-1 in OT games during that span. Two of Carle’s NCAA titles came off improbable goaltending heaters, including the most recent one. In 2024, goalie Matt Davis saved 138 shots out of 141 over four games (.979 SV%) to win the national title. In 2026, goalie Johnny Hicks, a relative unknown and undrafted true freshman, finished the season on a 16-game win streak (???), including stopping 128 of 134 shots (.955) in the tourney.
I don’t want to call it luck, because Carle is a fabulous hockey coach, but also… when every bounce in every big game goes your way for five years, there has to be some element of good fortune. And yes, there is a little bit of a salty feeling in my writing as a Michigan fan, who watched his team vastly outplay Carle’s in the Frozen Four yet lose the game (Denver was caved in in both Frozen Four games and won both because of goaltending). Of course, a coach who is the consummate winner and can speak with extreme confidence that things will turn out okay, even in stressful situations, may be an asset.
My point in illustrating this isn’t to denigrate Carle, but to highlight for readers who aren’t college hockey experts that, while Denver has been a great program under Carle, their postseason accomplishments have far outstripped even their strong regular-season success. Carle’s Denver teams are closer to the 2010-2014 San Francisco Giants than they are the 1980s New York Islanders in terms of dominance over the field. Very good in the regular season, inexplicably invincible in the postseason.
Carle, I assume, would contend that his magic in single-elimination tournaments has extended beyond Denver, too, which is true. He coached Team USA to gold medals at the 2024 and 2025 World Junior Championships, where his teams went 13-1 (12-0 in regulation) between the two tournaments. More than anything else, David Carle just wins hockey games. When his teams are better than the opponent’s, he wins. When his teams are the same calibre as the opponent, he wins. When his teams are getting skated off the ice by the opponent, damnit, he still wins.
Not hard to see why NHL teams are interested.
Coaching scheme
In the era before CHL players were eligible to play college hockey, there were multiple ways to build a contending team. You could load up on high draft picks, who are the most talented players in the sport, but because they’re 18 or 19, they are likely to make mistakes and aren’t physically developed. The other option is to pursue less-talented players — the kinds who were drafted in the third, fourth, or fifth round — and develop them into veterans. They won’t be as skilled as your Macklin Celebrini or Gavin McKenna types, but they are smarter, more experienced, and bigger.
Carle has generally built through the latter method. His Denver teams haven’t lacked talent, but he hasn’t generally had the eye-popping first-rounders that Michigan, BC, or Minnesota usually possess, a similar mold used by past national champions WMU and Quinnipiac. Zeev Buium was the most talented player Carle coached, while Bobby Brink is his most successful pro to date. He hasn’t had many Logan Cooleys or Adam Fantillis, but he usually has a deep roster of drafted players who stay for three or four years and become excellent college hockey players.
Carle’s 2025-26 roster at Denver is demonstrative of this, with 14 drafted players (one of the highest totals in the NCAA) but not a single player taken in the top 50. From an NHL lens, Erik Pohlkamp was probably the most interesting prospect on this DU team, an undersized defenseman who was a former fifth-round pick of San Jose, whom Carle brought in from the transfer portal at Bemidji State and developed into the highest-scoring defender in college hockey.
For me, that method of roster building is what makes Carle’s success as a head coach even more impressive. Carle develops the skills of individual players and instills rock-solid structure in his teams. And when we compare Carle to similar successful coaches who build more through veteran mid-round draft picks rather than first-round blue chippers, Carle’s teams aren’t low-event, park-the-bus teams. In fact, they’ve often been some of the highest-scoring teams in college hockey.
Carle’s 2023-24 Denver team was one of the highest-scoring D1 NCAA teams of the 21st century at a sizzling 4.6 goals per game. The next year, the team finished tied with WMU for the highest-scoring team in the country at 4.0 goals per game, and this season, they finished seventh at 3.6 goals per game. Yet it never felt like his teams were sacrificing defense for offense. Rather, they are as well-structured as any team in college hockey.
I have written about Carle’s teams at length over the years, first back in 2022 and again a few months ago, both ahead of matchups between Michigan and Denver in the Frozen Four. What feels notable to me about Carle, with regard to Maple Leafs GM John Chayka, is Chayka’s quote about building teams from the defense, because that’s exactly how Carle’s teams have been built. My quote from 2022:
Having watched both of their games in the regional (twice), I can say that I was impressed by the passing from the back-end forward by their defense. Their defensemen aren’t going to go on jawdropping rushes like Luke Hughes, nor do they cycle their defensemen below the goal line as often as Michigan does. The defensemen do lead the rush on some occasions, but not with wild abandon. Where they are extremely dangerous, though, is making the vertical stretch pass to set up a rush chance for their forwards.
As for the rest of the scheme:
On the forecheck, Denver is tenacious. They send F1 below the goal line to flush out the defenseman rather than letting the opposition calmly wait for the right breakout. If F1 starts to make noise, F2 will slide down as well to apply additional pressure. When the opposing regroup comes into the neutral zone, the forwards don’t stand in stationary positions, but instead surf around a bit to try and apply more pressure. They do not make it calm and easy for opposing defensive corps.
This hadn’t changed much when I looked at the Pioneers again ahead of this year’s Frozen Four. They remained a team with great puck-moving defenseman (really, the defining trait of Carle’s DU teams) who immediately look to spring rushes for their forwards after getting the puck and snap stretch passes constantly. They also remained a good forechecking team, effective at forcing turnovers.
Interestingly, Carle’s version of forechecking has never been the Brad Treliving or Craig Berube version. His forecheck is not the big, physical approach of “snot,” looking to beat the opponent into submission. Carle’s teams are not particularly physical and are, in fact, one of the smallest teams in college hockey on an average height/weight basis. But what they lack in size, they make up for in speed and tenacity. They are on top of you constantly; fast, tenacious, and aggressive.
It works because once the puck is turned over, Denver capitalizes on mistakes quicker than any other team in college hockey. As I wrote a month ago:
The best way to describe this team is “opportunistic”. They attack and have their own style, sure, but what they did in the regional was destroy their opponents based on mistakes. Turnovers, sloppy breakouts, just passes that get away and Denver seizes the opportunity. Opponents beat themselves against Denver because the Pioneers turn those turnovers into goals with frightening frequency. They are skilled and fast, both in the NZ and the OZ, hungry for a chance to arise.
The Regional Final against a very good Western Michigan team is a great example. In the same way we talked about opponents of the Keefe-era Leafs in the playoffs waiting for the Leafs to make a dumb mistake and then pounce, that’s what the most recent Denver team did best. They may not have a better lineup of players than every team they face, but they will be better coached than just about anyone. That’s a big advantage.
Would he take the Toronto job?
I feel very good about David Carle as an NHL coaching candidate. I think the upper echelon of college hockey coaches, particularly the big trio of Carle, Pat Ferschweiler (WMU), and Adam Nightingale (MSU), could succeed as NHL coaches right now. Carle is probably the best of all of them. He coaches a modern approach to hockey based around speed and skill, forcing opponents into mistakes and possessing the puck.
Carle’s work with Denver, alongside his time coaching the US WJC team, shows he can win with skilled players and different rosters. Carle is young, smart, and energetic. If the Maple Leafs hired him as their new head coach, I would be pretty ecstatic, in spite of how much pain his success has caused me as a Michigan Hockey fan. I think Carle will have success in the NHL, and he could be a guy who coaches at one place for a long time.
However, the question of “would he take the Leafs job?” is the one I don’t know the answer to. Admittedly, when Alec asked me about the possibility a few days ago, I poured cold water on it at first. But if the Leafs are seriously interested, we can’t ignore the scenario. I don’t know Carle personally, but my general guess based on what I have heard is that Carle will be looking for far more than just money. Carle is reportedly very highly compensated at Denver. The Maple Leafs, of course, could top that given their financial resources, but I don’t think that factor will prove decisive.
It’s worth remembering that Denver is home to Carle. He’s lived in Denver for 16 of the last 18 years, working at or attending the University. He has young children, and uprooting his whole life will not be undertaken lightly, especially when he’s well paid and can continue to win at a terrific clip. There’s nothing to say Carle needs to leave Denver, other than the allure of a bigger challenge. The example of Jim Montgomery, Carle’s mentor and a great coach himself, also looms large.
Montgomery led the Boston Bruins to a Presidents’ Trophy in 2023 with the highest point total in NHL history, and less than 18 months later, he was out of a job, due in large part to a down season from goalie Jeremy Swayman — a down season that likely started due to Swayman missing training camp after GM Don Sweeney entered into a strange and unnecessary contract dispute/holdout. One can argue that Sweeney pushed Montgomery under the bus, which NHL GMs do constantly; NHL coaches have less job security than those in any other major pro sport in North America.
Contrast that to Carle at Denver, where he could quite literally have that job for life if he wanted to. Why give that up for a gig where you can risk getting hung out to dry by a bad GM at the first sign of trouble?
This is a long way of saying that prying Carle out of Denver won’t be easy. You’re going to need to provide a vision for the franchise and a long-term guarantee of job security. Carle will want to be part of the franchise’s brain trust and future plans, not just another brick in the wall, hired to be fired.
That’s why I’ve long assumed a team like the San Jose Sharks is more likely to get Carle, as a franchise that can argue, “We’re well situated for the future, and we want you to be the guy to lead us there.” The Maple Leafs, by contrast, are a little different. They are a team caught between trying to win now, with an aging core and roster, and trying to win in the future, with (possibly) Gavin McKenna on the way to lead a new, younger core consisting of Matthew Knies and Easton Cowan.
Is that attractive to Carle? I don’t know. It all comes down to what vision John Chayka tries to sell to Carle. If they promise him a hand in hockey operations and a long-term deal, positioning Carle as the guy to win now while also developing McKenna and being around for the future, it could be an attractive pitch.
It’s also possible that Carle just isn’t ready to leave Denver or thinks this isn’t the perfect job for him. The ball is in Carle’s court if the Leafs or any other team come hard after him, and ultimately, it’s hard to predict which way he’s feeling.
