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Belfast Giants signed a Friendse graduate Robert “Bobo” carpenter for the 2024/25 elite league campaign.
A 27 -year -old Captain Boston University in Massachusetts is second in the 2018 tournament and now returns to the SSE arena to represent the Giants. Carpenter, who will likely play left wing but could also play centre, joins after a winning season with the ECHL’s Florida Everblades, who won the Kelly Cup last season. The forward recorded 28 goals and 46 points in 60 regular season games with the Everblades, who then made the playoffs and won the trophy with 12 goals and 23 points in 23 games. Carpenter is also a former Hockey East champion at Boston University, where he was a prolific scorer with 56 goals and 102 points in 144 games for the Terriers, who won the conference title in 2018. The American was named to the All-Star Second Team that season, playing alongside Shane Bowers, Cameron Crotty, Dante Fabbro, Jordan Greenway, Jake Oettinger and Brady Tkachuk. His star collegiate career would see Carpenter earn an AHL contract with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, the affiliate of the New York Islanders, but he would find himself in and out of the line-up, playing just 49 games in three seasons and scoring just nine goals and 20 points.
He would split time between the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals and the Everblades in the 2021/22 season before moving to Florida on a permanent deal the following year, but injuries saw him limited to just five games, although he would find the net four times. This allowed Carpenter to return last season and, while he wasn’t as lethal in front of goal during the regular season, he was reinvigorated with his shooting and helped lead the Everblades to a Kelly Cup title and will likely bring that winning experience to Belfast in the new season. Carpenter comes from a talented hockey family, the son of former Stanley Cup winner and US Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Carpenter, and his sister Alex has won six world championships and two Olympic silver medals.
With the arrival of Carpenter, the Giants have officially completed their forward panel for the upcoming season, meaning they are officially waving goodbye to David Goodwin, their former captain who left prior to last season but then returned midway through the campaign again.
The American winger is understood to have retired and has taken up a non-hockey job back in North America, and departs having scored 74 goals and 234 points in 203 games in all competitions for the Giants, winning the treble in the 2022/23 season and a further Elite League and Challenge Cup double in the prior campaign. The departures of wingers Henrik Eriksson, Bobby MacIntyre, Ara Nazarian, Greg Printz and Kohei Sato, as well as centre Blake Speers, are also confirmed. The status of defenders Travis Brown and Will Cullen is currently unknown, while Miles Gendron is currently without a club but will not be returning to Belfast, according to his wife Jackie’s Instagram page, in which she said they were looking for a new challenge closer to home.