A Calgary kid is coming home to start his professional hockey career.

Per a report from Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli, Calgary-born University of Denver captain Carter King is expected to be signing with the Calgary Flames. Seravalli reported King’s impending signing on social media on Sunday.

A left shot centre, King is currently 23 but turns 24 this summer, so he can only sign a one year entry-level deal with the Flames. Seravalli is reporting that his deal won’t begin until the fall, and he’ll be joining the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers (presumably on an amateur try-out deal) for the remainder of this season.

A Lake Bonavista kid, King played hockey in the Calgary area until 2019-20, when he joined the BCHL’s Surrey Eagles. From there, he joined the University of Denver Pioneers. He’s played five seasons with the Pioneers, progressing offensively each season and becoming a more and more important cog in a very good collegiate program. He won national championships in 2021-22 and 2023-24 with the Pioneers. He attended Flames development camp last summer.

This past season, King had 21 goals and 22 assistss for 43 points over 44 games. He was named a third-team conference all-star.

In addition to being a really good young hockey player, Carter’s the grandson of Frank King, who was one of the principal architects of the 1988 Calgary Olympics.

The Flames are a bit lean on centres organizationally. While college free agent signings are often rolls of the dice – sometimes you find Walker Duehr, sometimes you find Kenney Morrison – at the very least they can be pretty useful to help build out your club’s reserve list and create some competition at the minor-league level. The Wranglers currently have Minnesota State product Kaden Bohlsen and North Dakota’s Carter Wilkie (another Calgary kid) playing on try-out deals. Adding King provides the organization with a bit of depth and competition right now, with the potentially to perhaps grow into something of more significance in the future.

Simply put: adding a local kid to a one year pro deal after a promising college career is a really low-risk move. We’ll see how it pans out.