When the calendar rolls over to August, you know you are in the deep summer of hockey. Players might be back home or with their families on vacation, the members of the hockey media might take the month to recharge before training camps convene in September. But even while the pace in front office might bend to the rhythm of the summer season, there is occasional activity. Sometimes, it is even consequential.
One of those instances took place on August 4, 2005. Barely
a month before training camp started for the 2005-2006 season, the Caps traded
a sixth round pick in the 2007 entry draft and a seventh round draft choice in
the 2006 draft to the Calgary Flames for a seventh round pick in the 2007 draft
and winger Chris Clark.
Clark, who had last been seen in the Stanley Cup final in
2004, before the NHL went dark for a season due to a lockout, was coming off
three consecutive 10-goal seasons with the Flames. By the standard of the
times, that being the latter stages of the dead-puck era, 10-goal seasons were
not bad, but Clark was thought of more as a grinder, a player who would do the
dirty work in the corners and in front of the net to create space and chances
for more skilled forwards.
No one could have foreseen that upon becoming a Capital,
Clark would double his goal output to 20 in his first season with the club and
would record his first (and only, as it turned out) 30-goal season in the NHL
the following year (including nine power play goals, almost doubling his career
power play goal output in his career to that date). It was in that second
season with the Caps that he endeared himself to Capitals Nation for
demonstrating just what “hockey tough” means. Having been named captain
entering the season, Clark was leading by example late in regulation in a
November contest against the Boston Bruins. With just over a minute left, he took a puck in the face that knocked out two teeth and crushed his palate bone.
And yet, he finished his shift. He recorded neither a point nor a shot in that
game, but it served as an object lesson to his young teammates on toughing it
out. He missed just two games before returning to the lineup, further cementing
his reputation as a tough player.
The 2006-2007 season would be a career high-water mark for
Clark, though. Injuries led to large chunks of lost games, and he recorded just
10 goals and 30 points in 88 games over parts of the next three seasons before
being traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets with defenseman Milan Jurcina for
forward Jason Chimera in December 2009. Clark finished that season and played
one more in Columbus before his career came to an end at age 34.
But what if August 4, 2005 came and went without a trade?
Would things have been different? It’s hard to say that keeping those
late-round 2006 and 2007 draft picks would have made a difference for the
better, or for the worse, for that matter. However, those were the first two
seasons in which Alex Ovechkin skated with the club, and he did not have a
wealth of offensive talent surrounding him, even with Clark. In his rookie season
in 2005-2006, Ovechkin (52 goals) and Clark (20) were two of four 20-goal
scorers for the club (Dainius Zubrus and Matt Pettinger were the others). Their
72 combined goals accounted for 25.7 percent of the club’s total. The following
season, Ovechkin (46 goals) and Clark (30) accounted for 32.5 percent of the
team’s total goal scoring.
The question becomes, did Clark’s presence and production
make a difference in the early formative years in Ovechkin’s career, or would
his absence have been reflected in more attention focused on Ovechkin with less
production as a thinner lineup failed to provide enough offensive support to
take the scoring burden off the youngster?
In that first season for Ovechkin, he opened on a line with Zubrus and
Jeff Halpern, veterans in their own right.
Zubrus was a veteran of 539 regular season games going into that
2005-2006 season, while Halpern dressed for 368 games before Opening Night in
2005-2006. In fact, that
Ovechkin-Halpern-Zubrus combination also closed the season and was intact for
much of the intervening schedule.
The following season opened with Ovechkin on a line with Zubrus
and Richard Zednik, while Clark was skating with Alexander Semin and Kris
Beech. That lasted one game, a 5-2 loss
in New York to the Rangers. In Game 2,
the Caps’ home opener, Ovechkin scored a pair of goals, Clark assisting on
both. It was, as they say, the beginning
of a beautiful relationship. Clark
skated with Ovechkin and Zubrus until the latter was traded to the Buffalo
Sabres late in the season, Kris Beech filling in at center for the most part
thereafter. But Clark and Ovechkin were
fixtures on that top line.
It mattered. Although
the Caps struggled overall in the 2006-1007 season, they won just one of the
eight games that Clark missed that season (1-4-3). Ovechkin did fine in Clark’s absence over
those eight games, going 5-4-9. The rest
of the team, however, could not make up the scoring, averaging 2.50 goals per
game while averaging 2.89 goals per game with Clark in the lineup.
Those eight games missed offer a window into what things
might have been like had the trade not been made for Clark. His influence on Ovechkin’s development, in terms
of the raw numbers, appears negligible.
But he provided hard minutes and consistent production, the latter being
a rare commodity with those first two teams coming out of the lockout. One cannot help but think the Caps, unsuccessful
as they were in those first two years, might have been worse. And that is where things could have gone
sideways in terms of the timeline.
It is possible that the Caps could have finished more than
five points worse in the 2005-2006 season, which could have left them with the
third overall draft pick instead of the fourth pick. Caps fans know that the club selected Nicklas
Backstrom with the fourth overall pick.
But picking third, Jonathan Toews (who was taken with the third pick by
the Chicago Blackhawks) would have been available. General Manager George McPhee might still
have taken Backstrom, who he preferred to Jordan Staal, taken second overall in
that draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins.
But, if there was some uncertainty in which direction the Caps wanted to go,
perhaps there was room for a deal to be made to allow the Caps to move down in
the order and still get Backstrom.
The 2007 draft might have been more intriguing had Clark
never come to Washington. The 2006-2007
Caps struggled once more and finished only two points ahead of the Los Angeles
Kings and thre ahead of the Phoenix Coyotes.
The Caps, without Clark, might well have finished with the second-worst
record in the league, and even if the Blackhawks still won the ping pong ball
draw to draft first overall, the Caps would have had the third pick, not the
fifth with which they selected Karl Alzner.
But before you spend too many brain cells on this, the 2007 draft does
not seem, in retrospect, to have been a deep draft. Chicago would have taken Patrick Kane, as
they in fact did, and the Caps might have taken James van Riemsdyk (taken
second by Philadelphia in real time) or Kyle Turris (taken third in real time
by the Coyotes). Ot they might have
taken Thomas Hickey, who was the first defenseman taken in the draft, one spot
ahead of Alzner, but who didn’t become a full-time NHL player until the
2013-2014 season with the New York Islanders.
Then there is the matter of coaching. Glen Hanlon had the misfortune of trying to
guide this young team through the formative stages of its development. Having a veteran such as Clark helped in ways
tangible (goals and assists) and intangible (experience). In his absence, the team might not have been
hard-working but unsuccessful, just bad.
Worse seasons than the ones the Caps had might have hastened a coaching
change (Hanlon was relieved by Bruce Boudreau in late November of the 2007-2008
season). Perhaps Boudreau, who was
coaching the Hershey Bears, is elevated in the off season following the
2006-2007 campaign. Or, with more time
to deliberate and consider possibilities, the Caps go in an entirely different
direction in favor of a head coach with more experience. Would Claude Julien, who was fired late in
the 2006-2007 season, come up on the Caps’ radar (he went to Boston that
summer)? Would free agent head coach Mike Keenan have been considered (he went
to Calgary)?
Chris Clark had his greatest team success with the Calgary
Flames, reaching the 2004 Stanley Cup final, but he had his most successful
years individually with the Capitals.
His 20 and 30 goal seasons are largely lost in what was at the same time
part of an unsuccessful stretch in team history but the first years in the
spectacular career of Alex Ovechkin.
However, his work ethic, consistency, and toughness allowed him to carve
out a couple of fine seasons in the midst of the team’s struggles and gave the
club some ballast, a foundation upon which the young guys could learn what it
takes to play at this level.
The odd part about speculating on what might have happened
had Clark never come to Washington is the scope of possibilities and the
consequential nature of them. The Caps
might have looked very different on the ice with the high draft picks they
might have made and behind the bench, depending on the timing of coaching
changes they might have made. One cannot
help but think that the Caps are better today for having had Clark pass though
Washington, although in ways that might not be immediately apparent.
Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images North America
