By TERRY NAU

Sports editor

PAWTUCKET — Keith Carney revealed his retirement over the weekend in the quiet, unassuming manner we have come to expect from this modest city native who competed for 17 years in the National Hockey League.
Carney — the ultimate family man — let his wife Amy announce the news via email to family members and friends. Talk about old soldiers slowly fading away. The 38-year-old Carney, a free agent who received a few feelers from other NHL teams to continue his career, decided to forego those opportunities and do the thing he loves the best … watch his four children grow up.
“I think Keith was tired of the traveling,” his father Jack said on Monday afternoon. “He’s going to be 39 years old in February and he has been away from his home and his family for so much time over the years. His three triplet sons — Kade, Aidan and Cole — just turned seven years old. His daughter Morgan is five. I know that retiring from hockey was a difficult decision for Keith. It’s sad to see his career end. He’s been playing hockey since he was three years old. I think the time had come for him to make a decision. He’s at a point in his life now where his kids are playing (hockey) and he wants to spend more time with them.”
Carney and his family live in Paradise Valley, Arizona. It is an area of the country that Amy and Keith fell in love with when they spent four years with the Phoenix Coyotes (1997-2001).

Carney played all over the country during his hockey career. He was drafted 76th overall by the Buffalo Sabres in 1988 after a sterling career at Mount St. Charles Academy in Woonsocket. The 6-foot-2, 205-pound defenseman chose to play college hockey at the University of Maine and spent three seasons there under coach Sean Walsh. Then he signed with Buffalo and played 24 games with the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League before joining the Sabres late in the 1991-92 NHL season.
Carney made his NHL debut on March 8, 1992 and scored his first goal two weeks later against the Chicago Blackhawks. Traded to Chicago in 1993, his career began to gain traction in the NHL as a Blackhawk. He learned the ropes from future Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Chelios, who molded his young teammate into a steady backline defender. Carney  developed into a positional defenseman who rarely made mistakes and usually finished with one of the better plus-minus ratios on his team.
Carney spent five seasons with Chicago before he was traded to Phoenix in 1998. In the summer of 2001, he was traded to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, where he had the privilege of playing on a Stanley Cup finalist in 2003. The Ducks traded him to Vancouver late in the 2005-06 season.
On July 1, 2006, Keith signed a two-year contract worth $4.2M with the Minnesota Wild, where he finished his career, serving as a steadying hand for a team filled with young defensemen.  He played his 1,000th career NHL game on Feb. 24 of 2008, becoming only the 29th American-born player to surpass this milestone.
On April 11 of this year, Carney’s name and face flashed across the highlight films around the country one last time when he became the oldest defenseman to score an overtime goal in the Stanley Cup playoffs. His tally in Game 2 of the Western Conference quarterfinals gave the Wild an exciting victory over the Colorado Avalanche.
Carney completed his career with 45 regular season goals and 183 assists. He played in 91 playoff games, netting three goals and 19 assists.
Keith’s career is not about the numbers, or drawing attention to himself, as his father would be first to admit.
“Keith doesn’t really like to talk about himself,” Jack Carney said. “He was never boastful, even at a young age. We started him skating when Keith was 3 years old and he was the leading scorer in his Squirt League at Lynch Arena when he was 5 years old. People would tell my wife Dolores and I that Keith had a lot of talent. We were just happy he was playing hockey and having fun.
“When Keith was 8, he was picked for a travel team out of Providence, and that was when he started to get some good coaching,” Jack Carney recalled. “Keith always had a good sense about sports. He was one of those kids who did a lot of stuff that you didn’t have to coach. No matter what sport he played, he understood the game, and had vision.”
Keith grew up as the youngest of four boys. Brothers Mike, Kurt and Brad paved the way, playing and starring in various sports. Kurt made all-state as a defensive tackle for St. Raphael Academy in the mid-1980s.
“Keith learned a lot from his brothers,” Jack Carney added. “He was always getting pushed around when he played with them. From the time he was 3, Keith followed his brothers to their practices at Lynch Arena. They showed him the way.”
At Mount St. Charles, Carney learned the disciplined style of defensive hockey that would become his trademark.
“Keith always said Bill Belisle was the best coach he ever played for,” Jack Carney admitted. “He played for a great coach in college, too, Sean Walsh. I’ll never forget Sean coming into our living room and telling us Keith would get his education and he would become an NHL player while he was at Maine. And that’s how it turned out.”
Jack and Dolores Carney never pushed their sons in sports, preferring to sit back and let them enjoy the competition.
“When Keith was in ninth grade, we asked him what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to play professional hockey,” Jack Carney recalled. “As parents, we knew what the percentages were of that happening. It’s very small. Just from high school to college, very few players get that far. But Keith kept pushing. It’s amazing what he accomplished and it makes me very proud. He made our family proud.”
The Carney family followed Keith’s career from Mount to Maine to the NHL. Jack and Dolores Carney especially enjoyed the Stanley Cup finals in 2003, flying to California for the Ducks’ home games and then taking in the games at New Jersey’s rink in East Rutherford.
“The finals were amazing,” Jack Carney said. “Keith really took his game to another level that year. The Ducks lost to the Devils in the seventh game of the finals. I guess that was the highlight of his career.”