Chiarot making most of NHL opportunity

Former Storm defenseman Ben Chiarot has stepped into a feature role with the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.

by Tim Campbell, Winnipeg Free Press —

THEY are the most important monuments of arrival, one’s first NHL game and one’s first NHL goal.

In Ben Chiarot’s suddenly promising career, they are very much opposites and certainly a measurement of how far the 23-year-old from Hamilton, Ont., has come in a very short time.

With an injury dilemma ahead of their Nov. 2, 2013 home game vs. the Chicago Blackhawks, the 2009 fourth-round draft pick of the Atlanta Thrashers was summoned to Winnipeg.

No doubt it was exciting, as any first game is for a prospect, but Chiarot was a classic deer in headlights that day, playing 10:47 and looking pretty much as lost as the Jets — 5-1 on the wrong side of the score — that day.

“That was a tough go, eyes wide open and caught standing around and watching a little bit,” said Jets assistant coach Charlie Huddy on Sunday when asked to recall the game. “At the end of the day, you probably look back and it was a good learning experience for him.

“When he went back down he probably realized what he needed to improve on and things he needed to get better at. And credit to him, he’s gone and done that.”

Chiarot did indeed go right back to the St. John’s IceCaps of the AHL, where revelations and discoveries and determination eventually made him a rock on The Rock as the Jets’ farm team went all the way to the AHL’s championship series.

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