WHERE ARE THEY NOW: It’s location, location, location for Clark’s career

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/04/2020 (2262 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Andrew Clark knows firsthand how important location can be in his hockey career. And it goes well beyond what happens on the ice.

Clark, who turns 32 tomorrow and spent four seasons with the Brandon Wheat Kings from 2005 to 2009, was playing in Austria for the 2018-19 season when he and his wife Brittany’s infant daughter Charlee became very ill.

“Charlee actually got super sick after being in Austria for just a couple of days,” Clark said. “She had meningitis so I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else actually at that point because of the health-case system they have there. She was in a children’s hospital that was five years old only and they were doing world research on children’s care. It was the scariest moment of my life but we were grateful we were where we were and she was able to get through it.”

The youngster, who is now 19 months old, has completely recovered in the latest and most important instalment of the good fortune Clark has enjoyed in where he played the game.

His attachment to hockey came early.

Clark was born in Carberry and lived outside of town, about a half mile from his grandparents Lorne and Jessie Clark.

“Grandma and grandpa had the rink every year in grandma’s garden,” Clark said. “I was two-and-a-half I believe when I started skating.”

He started playing organized hockey at age four, and with father Laurie and mother Amanda no longer together, his dad and grandparents did much of the driving to get him into town for games and practices.

“I spent a lot of time at grandma and grandpa’s, and they would take me into the rink as well if my dad was working,” Clark said. “My dad did a lot for us. He had his own business, a mobile seed-cleaning business, so he would be up at whatever time and back at whatever time just so he could get the work done, so that when I had hockey he would be able to take me.”

Clark almost exclusively played centre from a very early age in Carberry, and stayed in the middle after the family moved to Brandon before his minor bantam season.

He was a big hockey fan, and supported his future team at every opportunity.

“I went to a lot of Wheat Kings games, every chance we could,” Clark said. “They had always done the minor hockey program I think, so even when I was a kid, seven, eight, nine, 10, they would hand out tickets to all the minor hockey teams, even in the rural areas, Carberry, Minnedosa, Neepawa, Souris. Each age group would get tickets to games. I’ve always been a Wheat Kings fan and when I got the chance to play there, it was a dream come true.”

By his major bantam season, the year players get picked in the annual Western Hockey League draft, he was well aware of its potential significance. It didn’t happen for him, but that certainly didn’t diminish his drive.

“You want to get drafted but I wasn’t,” said Clark, who never forgot that fact when he was auditioning for a job with the Wheat Kings a couple of years later.

“It didn’t change my mentality at all. It’s nice I assume if you get picked, but if you don’t, it’s not a game-changer.”

Brandon listed him the next season as he played on the U18 Wheat Kings team that won the national Air Canada Cup in 2004.

“That was one of, if not the funnest years I’ve had playing hockey,” Clark said. “I think any time you win a championship, it’s not going to be a bad time. We were a very close group team-wise, from the 15-year-olds to the older guys who were in their last year in midget.

“We were pretty much a team of misfits if you look back at it now. There were obviously some guys who went on to play WHL and some professional, but compared to the other (U18) teams around Canada that we were playing against, you look back now and you’d be pretty surprised that we were the team to win it.”

That club included his future WHL teammates Tyler Plante, Bryan Kauk and Tyler Dittmer.

The next year, he decided to make the jump to the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Neepawa Natives rather than return to the midget squad.

“Topping that year of (U18) and going back and playing another year — I didn’t feel like I had done everything or proved everything in (U18) — but I just found that it was going to be so hard to repeat that year. I figured that would be the best step for my hockey career,” he said.

Neepawa’s coach, Craig Atkinson, told Clark at a camp he would have a great opportunity, which he did, playing in the top six and even earning power-play time. As a 16-year-old, he scored 19 goals and added 27 assists in 58 games, with 101 penalty minutes.

“I think it helped quite a bit knowing what to expect when you go against a bigger guy,” Clark said. “Is it going to hurt or is it just the same as being hit by a kid who is 15 years old who weighs 140 pounds? Just learning to play against bigger, stronger guys, physically it made a difference that way.

“Mentally, I’ve always been a kid who knew how to take a check because I was always smaller as a young kid. I’ve always played up an age group, even in minor hockey, so I knew what it was like and wasn’t afraid to do it.”

Even with his MJHL success, which included being named to the league’s all-rookie team, he took nothing for granted when he attended Wheat Kings camp in his 17-year-old season. He knew he had to show well at camp to earn a spot, a point driven home by the bantam draft two years earlier.

“Playing as an undrafted guy, you have to prove yourself that much more, just doing the little things right and doing the things that the coaches ask of you,” Clark said. “You have to prove everybody wrong who didn’t draft you. You have to prove the coach wrong, you have to prove the GM wrong, you have to prove every scout wrong in the organization basically because you’re taking a spot from a guy they drafted most likely.”

It paid off when Clark cracked the Wheat Kings roster for the 2005-06 season, joining a club led by Codey Burki, Mark Derlago and Teegan Moore.

It was a season of transition for the youngster as he accepted a lesser role than he had become accustomed to in previous years. In the first couple dozen games, he was a scratch in about half of them.

“The older guys proved themselves and they’re there for a reason,” said Clark, who lived at home and attended Vincent Massey. “That was a little difficult as well but going out there and taking the chances that you get and playing a different role also helps you as a player, especially being looked at as an offensive guy — I was an offensive guy my whole life — you go out there playing on the fourth line as a 17-year-old and your job is to basically not get scored on and create chances or energy for your team.”

He said it helped him learn to play a better defensive game during a season in which he scored nine times and added 14 assists in 61 games.

Everything changed for him a year later as an 18-year-old in the 2006-07 campaign.

Clark poured in 28 goals and added 32 assists in 72 games as part of a dynamic line with Derlago and Ryan Reaves that featured a little bit of everything.

“Mark had 46 goals that year,” Clark said. “He can put the puck in the net and he’s such a smart player and has such a good shot that if you give him the puck and he has a little bit of time, it’s going to go in.

“And on the other side I’m playing with Ryan Reaves, who is an absolute truck. That was still kind of the crossover (era) between those blindside hits and stuff that they’re getting away from nowadays, where if you cut through the middle with your head down you’re going to get run over by that guy, and that’s not something that anybody wants. Having him out there on my wing opened up room obviously for Mark and myself.”

He carried that success into the 2007-08 season, and was among the league leaders in scoring with 39 points in 30 games when disaster struck on Dec. 15, 2007. During a visit to the Prince Albert Raiders in Brandon’s last game before Christmas, Clark broke his right leg, costing him eight weeks.

Clark, who was an alternate captain in his final two seasons, returned on Feb. 18 for the final 19 games, earning 16 points.

“That’s been the only one of my career,” Clark said of the major injury. “I’ve had little ones but nothing that really kept me out for a period of time.”

“It was real tough,” he added.

Clark had been on a line with Dittmer and Matt Lowry, but another development that season would also pay dividends for Clark and the team moving forward.

Brayden Schenn and Scott Glennie had joined the team as 16-year-olds and Matt Calvert came in as an 18-year-old, and the trio provided another set of offensive threats for the team.

In his overage season in 2008-09, on a line with Lowry and Jay Fehr, Clark exploded for a team and career-high 40 goals and 38 assists in 72 games. He said the team’s depth helped him a lot.

“Teams were starting to look at the Schenn line a little bit more now that it was their second year in the league,” Clark said. “They were obviously great as rookies … In my 20-year-old year, teams were maybe going to focus on them a little bit more.”

The Wheat Kings had fallen in the first round twice and in the second round once in Clark’s time in Brandon, but in his final season they pushed to the Eastern Conference final before being swept by the Calgary Hitmen.

Clark’s last junior game was a 6-4 loss on April 22, 2009 in Brandon.

“When you come to a close, you look back at all the good times you’ve had and things along the way, and you think about the other guys that are done,” Clark said. “I don’t remember a lot about that night specifically but you just try to relay the message to the younger guys that it comes quick and to enjoy every second of it.”

After graduating from Brandon, Clark had an opportunity to sign a two-way deal in the Ottawa Senators organization. Instead, he opted to attend Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S., where he earned a degree in kinesiology, while using his WHL scholarship.

“In my mind, I was thinking that I could go to school for four years and still have the opportunity to go play professional,” Clark said. “I would be in the same situation I was right after my 20-year-old year.”

He and Brittany went out to visit the campus, located in a town of 4,100 that is 100 kilometres northwest of Halifax, before he committed to the Axemen. They immediately knew they were where they needed to be.

“It was tremendous experience all four years,” Clark said. “I would move to Nova Scotia or Wolfville tomorrow.”

In 111 U Sports games over four seasons, Clark put up 131 points, earning first-team all-star nods in the Atlantic University Sport conference twice and being named national player of the year for the 2011-12 season.

After his fourth hockey season at Acadia ended, he joined the Stockton Thunder of the ECHL while finishing his courses online. The Thunder fell to the Reading Royals in the Kelly Cup final, and Clark then returned to Acadia to write his final exams.

Clark went back to Stockton the next season, splitting the year between the Thunder and the American Hockey League’s Bridgeport Sound Tigers. He had success with both, with a combined 54 points in 66 games, but chose to head to Europe the next season.

“I had really good numbers in the East Coast and pretty good numbers in a small window in the A, and I felt that I had done enough to get an AHL contract,” Clark said. “I don’t know if it was my agent who couldn’t do it … but Europe was always on my radar. It was not a surprise that I was going there.”

For the 2014-15 season, Clark went to Esbjerg, Denmark, joining his former Brandon teammate Derlago in the top Danish league, the Metal Ligaen. He found immediate success, putting up 75 points in 36 games.

Since a majority of import players in Europe are free agents every season and there is frequent, unrestricted movement, he headed to Switzerland’s Rapperswil-Jona Lakers for a season, and then spent three years with HC Innsbruck in Austria.

Last year he was back in Switzerland with SC Langenthal.

In each of his six seasons abroad, he’s eclipsed the point-per-game mark.

Clark said his game is ideally suited for Europe.

“I play the same game that I played in North America, with maybe a little bit of physical aspects to it as well,” Clark said. “It really helps out. With the bigger ice surface, you have more room. I think one of the strengths to my game is being able to protect the puck down low and trying to be creative when you get a chance down low. That helped me out quite a bit, having a little bit more room.”

Playing in three countries in six years has its challenges, however. He said the toughest part is always the language barrier.

“You go to the grocery store and want to read a label but you can’t,” Clark said. “You have to break out Google translate and try and figure it out over the phone.”

The adventure may still be a long way from over.

Clark thinks he has plenty of gas left in the tank yet, in part because of the less rigorous schedule in Europe and the less physical play. He hasn’t signed for next year, but it’s early and he’s not concerned about finding a spot.

“We’ll worry about it a little further down the road,” Clark said.

The couple settled in Morden when Brittany was taking courses there, and the family is at home weathering the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Clark remains grateful for the opportunity he had to play in Brandon.

“It’s a great experience,” Clark said. “It’s your favourite team. You watched them all the time as a kid. It’s the best hockey other than going to Winnipeg to see the Jets now, but I didn’t have that option. You go watch your favourite players every game if you want to. You get to go to your own high school and be with your friends from home yet be able to play on your hometown junior team.”

Clark said Wheat Kings head coach, general manager and owner Kelly McCrimmon expected to win, and that was a trait passed down to the entire team. The formula to get there was simple. It was hard work.

It’s a lesson he hasn’t forgotten.

“Neepawa allowed me to learn how to be away from home and allowed me to mature as a player and as a person,” Clark said. “With the Wheat Kings, I learned a lot about hockey with the coaching staff we had. Kelly kept everyone accountable and turned everyone from a boy into a man.

“Not only did it have an impact on me as a player, it had an impact on me as a person too.”

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