“I’d graduated to be an instructor at 16,” Clark said with a laugh. “I guess I was good because I was the right age to teach kids. When you’re 16 and you’re teaching 6- and 8- and 10- and 12-year-olds, they can really relate to you. Young players who wanted to be instructors were good teachers because kids could relate to someone who wasn’t 30 years older than them. So my first teaching at hockey schools would have been with Barry.”
Another mainstay in the area was future Red Wings heavyweight Joey Kocur. Brothers in the Clark, Melrose and Kocur families, among others, were a tight-knit group, “something in the water of Kelvington,” Clark believes, fueling NHL careers.
Clark’s NHL career would intersect just one year with that of Melrose the player, in 1985-86, the rookie Clark colliding behind a net with Melrose in what raised the tent on a three-ring Gardens circus on Jan. 13, 1986.
Melrose tried to hit Clark at 14:31 of the third period, but the latter saw his cousin at the last second, lifting an elbow. A scuffle among all on the ice seemed to be the end of it until Red Wings coach Brad Park sent his team over the boards.