Railers goaltender Gabriel Carriere has played 54 professional hockey games for John McCarthy, more than any other coach, so how could he have not known that McCarthy was once a Crazed Rat, the left wing on that famous Sharks line with Dan DaSilva and Andrew Desjardins?
“He was always pretty calm,” Carriere recalled of his time playing for McCarthy with the San Jose Barracuda of the American Hockey League. “His attitude was always pretty much the same, kept an even keel through the ups and downs.”
Hardly the description of a Crazed Rat.
Carriere has had the typical ups and downs of a hockey career.
The Railers are his second team this season. They are his fourth overall. San Jose signed him after he played four years at Vermont. Carriere was with the AHL Barracuda for one game in 2023-24, then split the next two seasons between San Jose and Wichita of the ECHL.
He signed a two-way contract with Hartford before this season and began the year with the Wolf Pack before being loaned to the Railers. Everything trickles down from the New York Rangers, so Carriere’s status here is generally subject to change.
At present, though, Worcester has two goalies on the roster with AHL contracts. Parker Gahagen, on a Springfield deal, is the other.
Carriere made his Railers debut in Maine last weekend in a 3-1 loss. The Railers have a three-game homestand starting Monday morning when they play their annual School Day game at 10. The crowd is expected to be large and noisy.
“I’ve been at couple of them already,” Carriere said. “There’s a lot of screaming going on. They’re probably the loudest games I’ve ever been and my ears were ringing afterwards. They bring some energy, that’s for sure.”
Large, noisy crowds have been good to the Railers on home ice through the years. They are 8-0-0 when attendance is above 8,000 and 13-5-1 when it is above 7,000.
Carriere grew up in Ottawa and attended French schools. His favorite NHL goalie was Montreal’s Carey Price and his mom is a big Canadiens fan. He was 15-12-2 with four shutouts during his ECHL time in Wichita and is 27-23-6 with three shutouts in the AHL.
After the Monday morning game, Worcester is off until the weekend. The Railers play Wheeling next Saturday and Sunday. They expect to have captain and all-time leading scorer Anthony Repaci back for those games. He has missed the start of the season recovering from surgery.
Worcester’s roster moves continued at a good pace last week. With the Railers getting players from both Springfield and Hartford, that is likely to be the case all season.
They traded Dalton Duhart to Florida for future considerations, released former Holy Cross forward Michael Abgrall, had forward Matt DeMelis sign an AHL two-way contract with Springfield, received forward Sam Stange on loan from the Thunderbirds and forward Caige Sterzer on loan from Hartford.
When those moves were completed, Worcester had eight players on the roster on loan from the AHL.
RAILERS NOTES: Jordan Kaplan has scored 21 goals in a Worcester uniform and 13 of them have come in the third period. … There is already one team record in the books, not a good one, though. Maine’s Max Andreev has scored three shorthanded goals versus the Railers, including two in one game. He holds the all-time record for most career shorties against and is the only opponent with two in the same game. … Duhart played just one game before the trade but in doing so became the only player in Worcester hockey history to wear Number 91.
