"This scenario, according to Rick Carriere, is worth a chuckle or two.

Sitting down for contract "talks" Monday afternoon in Edmonton were two famously tight-lipped parties--Calgary Flames boss Darryl Sutter (notorious for being a gruff dude of few words) and Jay Bouwmeester (a polite young fellow with a well-known shy streak).

"Imagine the conversation," Carriere--a family friend of the Bouwmeesters, a current coworker of Jay's father Dan, a former coach of Jay with the Medicine Hat Tigers--was saying.

He then laughs.

"It wouldn't be much. 'Yup' . . . 'Yup' . . . 'Yup' . . . 'OK' . . . 'What do you think?' . . . 'Yup' . . . 'Don't know' . . . 'Yup.' "

Of course, the Flames and their fans would dearly love to hear just one word from Bouwmeester-- yes.

Carriere feels it's possible.

Despite teaching with Dan at Vimy Ridge Academy in Edmonton, he possesses no inside information-- "I haven't seen his dad yet. That's the first thing I'm going to do--run in there and see what Jay is up to"--but he can envision the year's ripest free-agent plum happily coming to terms with the Flames.

"Knowing that he wasn't going to be back in Florida, you're waiting for the shoe to drop," he says. "Saturday, I was out shingling at a buddy's place and I just happened to catch the news. And I thought, 'Geez, wouldn't that be something if he ended up playing in Calgary?' Because Calgary would be a great place for him to play.

"He wants to play somewhere where hockey is more of a front-page news item . . . rather than buried at the back of the sports section."

A one-time cog in the Tigers' hockey operations--coach from 1997 to 2000, general manager from 2000 to 2004--Carriere had the pleasure of dealing with a teenage Bouwmeester on a professional, as well as a personal, level.

In other words, he knows the lad.

"One thing about Jay--he's always had a quiet, level-headed disposition about him," says Carriere. "He doesn't get real emotional. He doesn't get wound up, one way or the other. There's a great even-keeledness about him. A real good demeanour. And he certainly doesn't talk out of turn.

"I remember I drove him to the (2002 Hershey Cup) all-star game in Red Deer and I thought, 'Ah, great, a chance to get caught up with Jay, to see how things are going.' I tell you, if I didn't ask question after question after question, there would have been no conversation because there was nothing coming back that would have led me into more conversation.

"But he's polite. Very respectful. Lots of time for everybody. Just a regular guy when you get him away from the rink. Awesome family. Mom. Dad. Sister. Great, great people. I've known Jay since he was a baby."

However, can Bouwmeester's reserved personality jibe with a hockey-mad market like Calgary? Where press responsibilities and fan requests arrive daily? Where the spotlight can be blinding?

"I think he'd do well," insists Carriere. "It's an area he's been doing some work on--his interaction with media. I'm sure he's very aware and conscious of that. He'll do just fine. The fact that there's other people like Jarome Iginla around . . . that's really going to help that, too. There's some top-end marquee guys there. Robyn Regehr's a levelheaded guy--Jay's no different than that. I don't hear Regehr talking anyone's ear off, either.""