Calgary Flames scout Bobbie Hagelin never made it to the NHL as a player, but in a way, through his younger brother, Carl, he did.
Bobbie, 29, in his first season as a European scout based in Stockholm, fondly remembers Carl, 24, as a 7-year-old, taking on all the older kids during hockey games in their family’s backyard in Sodertalje, Sweden, where there was “always a scrum.”
Bobbie, an elite teenage prospect, never stuck at the pro level in Europe, but now his pesky, once-skinny sibling is all grown up and racing down left wing for the Rangers.
“To see Carl play the way he does, it gets pretty emotional at times—I’m very proud of him,” Bobbie said. “You know how it is with a little brother. But at the same time he needs to keep going, keep doing what he does, never be satisfied. And that’s the guy he is. That’s why I think he can play there.”
The brothers’ bond has everything to do with Carl reaching the NHL in the first place.
Carl admits he was “extremely short” while his brother says Carl was a “pretty average” hockey player going into high school as a 16-year-old. That summer, however, he let his older brother organize an offseason workout.
“He pushed me, and that summer I grew,” Carl said. “It was a combination of growing and having a great role model in my brother.”
“That’s when he started to show me and other people around that this was serious,” Bobbie said.
That’s how Carl Hagelin earned a spot on Sodertalje SK’s under-18 and junior teams and attracted the attention of Rangers scouts Jan Gajdosik and Chris Rockstrom, who lobbied hard for his selection during the 2007 NHL entry draft. The Rangers picked him 168th overall in the sixth round, largely based on the speed he had developed at the rinks and gym with Bobbie in what became a grueling, annual summer training program.
“His conditioning is just unbelievable,” said Rangers director of player personnel Gordie Clark. “Most guys do a 50-, 60-second shift (and then go off). He can go a minute and a half and still have gas in his tank.”
At the draft, Clark said he also was confident that Hagelin’s conditioning only would improve by playing for the University of Michigan.
“Everything improved every year, and every fall when Michigan tested its players, he was the top-conditioned athlete on that team,” Clark said.
However, Clark recalled that Carl never attended the Rangers’ annual development camp, due either to family commitments or injury. So even though GM Glen Sather and the Blueshirts’ brass watched and studied Carl’s game from afar and drafted him, they never got a close look at him in person until he arrived at training camp in September of 2011.
By Thanksgiving that year Carl was up with the big club, an addition that coach John Tortorella said “changed our team.” Carl had an assist in his debut Nov. 25 in Washington and has not come out of the lineup since, other than a three-game suspension in last year’s playoffs for an elbow to the head of Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson, a fellow Swede.
Carl’s major blemish was going goalless during that playoff run, but over the last couple weeks he has laid to rest concerns about his finishing ability with a four-game goal streak (five total) from Feb. 10 through Feb. 17 and eight points in his last six games.
“A lot of my games, when I play my best, I might not get the scoring chances, but I might be setting it up or creating a turnover that sets it up,” Carl said, with a confidence and maturity he learned from Bobbie, who still pushes him every summer back home.
“Most of the credit goes to him: that he wants it so much, and how he handles himself,” Bobbie said. “I’m very impressed at the pro he’s become.”