Clayton Keller (born July 29, 1998) is an American professional ice hockey forward and captain for the Utah Hockey Club of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Arizona Coyotes selected him seventh overall in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft.
Born in Chesterfield, Missouri, and raised in Swansea, Illinois, Keller was part of a group of skilled young hockey players around his age growing up in the St. Louis area. He spent two years attending Shattuck-Saint Mary’s before joining the USA Hockey National Team Development Program in 2014, where he set a program record with 189 points in two seasons. While the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League selected him in the 2014 OHL Draft, Keller attended Boston University to play college ice hockey for the Terriers in 2016. In his one season there, he was named the Hockey East Rookie of the Year and won the Tim Taylor Award for the top NCAA Division I rookie. He left Boston University after one season, joining the Coyotes for the end of the 2016–17 season.
Playing in every game during his first two seasons of professional ice hockey, Keller led the Coyotes with 65 points in 2017–18 and 47 points the following season, and he was an NHL All-Star in 2019. Keller made his postseason debut with Arizona in the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs, where they were eliminated by the Colorado Avalanche in the first round (after winning the best-of-five qualifying round versus the Nashville Predators). He recorded his 200th career point and received his second All-Star Game selection during the 2021–22 season, but suffered a season-ending leg injury at the end of March. He played all 82 games in the 2022–23 season and tied the Coyotes single-season points record with 86 points, along with earning his third All-Star Game selection.
Early life
Keller was born on July 29, 1998, in Chesterfield, Missouri,[1] and he was raised in Swansea, Illinois by parents Bryan and Kelley Keller.[2][3] Keller and his younger brother Jake would play hockey in the basement of their family home while attending Wolf Branch School District 113,[4] the walls of which were painted to look like an ice hockey rink and were decorated with Keller’s favorite National Hockey League (NHL) players: Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane, Pavel Datsyuk, Alexander Ovechkin, and Evgeni Malkin.[5] He became interested in ice hockey at the age of three, when his mother took him to a high school game, and he joined a contingent of other St. Louis-area players around his age, including Luke Opilka, Luke Kunin, and Matthew Tkachuk.[6] In 2010 and 2011, Keller played in the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament with the St. Louis Blues minor ice hockey affiliate.[7]
In 2012, Keller joined the ice hockey team at Shattuck-Saint Mary’s, a boarding school in Faribault, Minnesota, and the alma mater of NHL players Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, and Kyle Okposo. He scored 58 goals and recorded 129 points in 60 games during the 2012–13 season.[8] After playing as a center during his first year with Shattuck-Saint Mary’s, Keller moved to the wing for the 2013–14 season.[9] After recording 94 goals and 112 assists in two seasons with Shattuck-St. Mary’s,[10] winning a national championship in the process, Keller joined the USA Hockey National Team Development Program (NTDP) for the 2014–15 season.[11][12] After registering 34 goals and 82 points in 60 games that season, Keller added another 37 goals and 107 points in 62 games during the 2015–16 season, the second-highest single-season point total in program history.[13] He spent two seasons in the NTDP, with 71 goals and 118 assists for 189 career points, setting the program record until 2019, when he was surpassed by Jack Hughes.
2 Comments
Thought it would be Doan next year
so excited!