Flyers rookie Karsen Dorwart rose from a hockey desert to an NHL debut in Montreal

MONTREAL — Growing up in Oregon, Karsen Dorwart had a hockey mural on the wall behind his bed.

As he dreamed about playing in the NHL, the artwork painted by his neighbor, with its white ice, red line, blue lines, and a hockey stick in the middle, was just a few inches above. On Saturday night, in one of the most historic hockey cities, those dreams became a reality when he made his NHL debut for the Flyers.

Were there any nerves for the 22-year-old, spotted by TV cameras sharing the pregame smelling salts with his winger Nick Deslauriers?

“Really just in the warmup,” he said with a laugh about his rookie lap. “Sailed my first shot, like eight feet over the net. But, I felt comfortable in the game.”

With a Mike Modano-like stride that similarly had the jersey flapping behind him as he skated in CCM Tacks akin to the ones the American legend wore, Dorwart did not look out of place despite playing for Michigan State nine days earlier.

Across 10 minutes, 32 seconds in the Flyers’ 3-2 loss to the Montreal Canadiens, Dorwart had three shot attempts, including two shots that goalie Sam Montembeault had to stop. He got time on the second power play and played 2:01 in the final 9½ minutes of the game with the Flyers needing a pair.

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“I liked him,” interim coach Brad Shaw said. “Seems to see the ice well. It seems like he reads plays well. You certainly trust his legs, twice there trying to leg it out against guys with shorthanded opportunities. So for a first game in an environment like that, you should feel really proud of how he played today.”

The Bell Centre was rocking with the Canadiens trying to hold onto the Eastern Conference’s second wild-card spot. It probably helped calm Dorwart’s nerves that he had friends and family in the stands watching.

“It’s been absolutely crazy, right?” his father, Gregg Dorwart, told The Inquirer about the last few days.

The same could be said for his son’s path to the Flyers.

Going from undrafted college player to NHLer isn’t unheard-of. Behind the Canadiens’ bench stood probably the most famous undrafted ex-college player in Martin St. Louis. But, unlike the Stanley Cup champion and ex-Vermont Catamount, Dorwart didn’t grow up in the hockey hotbed of Quebec. He grew up in the hockey desert of Oregon, where there were just two rinks across the state when he was growing up.

“Obviously, not a lot of guys have done it; hockey’s not very popular out there,” said Dorwart, the ninth NHLer from the state, on Friday. “Hopefully it grows with the team in Seattle now, but it’s just cool. I was blessed to have so many influential people who helped me during my time there, just growing up. They deserve all the credit in the world to help me get to the next point.”

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Dorwart’s parents, Janelle and Gregg, were Minnesota transplants, so it’s not a surprise he found hockey growing up in Sherwood, a Portland suburb. Gregg Dorwart skated as a kid, and after watching his father play in a beer league, a young Karsen wanted to try the sport.

“He was horrified,” Gregg recalled with a laugh when Karsen first put on skates at 4 years old. “He hated them because we got him hockey skates, and he kept falling because he was leaning back. So they put him in figure skates for like 20 minutes, which he hated more. And then he figured out the hockey skates.”

Indeed.

A hockey-obsessed kid, Dorwart and his parents battled through limited ice time. His games could be two weeks apart as the family hopped in the car and drove hours away from home — sometimes three hours to Seattle or an hour away for a 6 a.m. game in Vancouver, Wash., with Karsen the first one up and ready to go.

And that was just one of a handful of obstacles for a kid filled with NHL dreams.

“For many years, he was one of the smallest guys out there. He’s a late birthday, and he was small,” Gregg said of Karsen, whose birthday is two days after the NHL cutoff for the draft. “He had to be quick and evasive to avoid getting blown up. And then he grew a little bit.” He now stands 6-foot-1.

Dorwart, his parents, and sister Kalli often headed to Portland to watch the Winterhawks play in the Western Hockey League. It was there, in 2013, he watched his favorite player, Nathan MacKinnon, and the Halifax Mooseheads of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League beat the Winterhawks in the Memorial Cup championship game.

Although he didn’t play for Portland, Karsen did play junior hockey. There was interest from the Winterhawks, but Dorwart wanted to go to college, and this was before the rule change that now allows CHL players to play NCAA hockey. On Mother’s Day 2017, after a tryout, he got the invite from the San Jose Jr. Sharks.

“They kind of had to know that day, so before we left San Jose, he had to call his mom and said, ‘Mom, I need to do this. I want to do this.’ And she supported him, of course, with tears in her eyes,” Gregg Dorwart said.

San Jose is only a 1½-hour plane ride from Sherwood, but his time at the Hotchkiss School took him across the country to Connecticut. He spent two years there, but the COVID-19 pandemic erased his second season at the New England prep school, and he was left off draft boards. After a year with the Sioux Falls Stampede of the United States Hockey League, he enrolled at Michigan State.

And after three seasons, in which he was an honorable mention All-Big Ten selection twice, the centerman, who still has to wrap up his junior year academically, became an NHLer.

“Obviously faster. Everything happens quicker,” Dorwart said after being congratulated by his teammates in the locker room.

He had a shot in the first period from the right faceoff circle, on his fourth NHL shift, that seemed to handcuff Montembeault. Although he knows he has tons to work on — he specifically mentioned faceoffs — and despite the Flyers’ loss, there was no wiping the smile off his face.

In front of his family, who like him were making their first trek to Montreal, and friends including some Hotchkiss teammates, he donned No. 23 in orange and black.

“The bottom line is he just loves it more than anything,” Gregg Dorwart said. “I never once said, ‘Hey, maybe go out in the garage and shoot pucks or go lift weights.’ He did that on his own. Part of it, I think he’s a little hyper kid, but he loved hockey so much, that’s what he wanted to do.”