Anchorage hockey player Matt Carle headlines 2022 Alaska Sports Hall of Fame class

It has been a busy and exciting month for the Carle brothers as the siblings from Anchorage collected impressive honors within two weeks of each other.

Approximately 13 days after his younger brother David coached his alma mater, the University of Denver, to a Division I national men’s hockey title, Matt Carle was immortalized in his home state of Alaska as an inductee to the 2022 Alaska Sports Hall of Fame class.

His enshrinement comes after storied career at the collegiate level followed by a 12-year career in the pros. In college, Carle was a standout defensemen for the Pioneers, helping propel the program to back-to-back titles in 2004 and 2005. In 2006, he became the first Alaskan to win the Hobey Baker Award, which is awarded to the nation’s top college hockey player.

His professional career in the NHL spanned 857 games including the playoffs and featured stints with four different teams. He was originally drafted by the San Jose Sharks in the second round of the 2003 NHL Draft and also played for the Tampa Bay Lightning, Philadelphia Flyers and Nashville Predators before retiring in 2016 with 328 career points scored.

Carle’s fellow enshrinees included the late Marcie Waldron Trent, the Fairbanks Outboard Association’s Yukon 800 Mile Marathon boat race and the historic upset achieved by the 1991 UAA hockey team over then-juggernaut Boston College at the NCAA Championships that year.

Trent was a trailblazer in the Alaska running community for decades despite not joining it until she was 50 years old. Her decorated career as a runner included setting and holding several national and world records for her age groups in events such as the 800 meters, marathons and ultramarathons. She was inducted into the USA Track and Field Masters Hall of Fame in 2001 seven years after her death in 1995. Trent and her son, Larry Waldron, were killed in a bear attack in 1995 while running in Chugach State Park.

The Yukon 800 is a high speed riverboat race that spans two days and dates back nearly 50 years. It is run on the Chena, Tanana, and Yukon Rivers, and travels through hundreds of miles of Alaskan wilderness. It is touted as the most arduous speed boat race in the world.

The 1991 Seawolves team was an independent back then and didn’t have a league when they bested the BC Eagles by winning the first two games of their three game series. It included a 3-2 victory in the first game followed by a 3-1 triumph the next night to advance to the NCAA quarterfinals, where they fell to the eventual national title-winning Northern Michigan Wildcats.