Pittsburgh Penguins vet Gary Roberts, his battered knuckles and his 20 seasons of NHL experience, lined up at the faceoff circle next to a scrappy, rookie from the New Jersey Devils.
“I want to fight you,” said the kid.
“Pardon?” replied Roberts, who had 18 years, two All-Star Games and a Stanley Cup ring on the 20-something in evergreen pants.
“You were one of my idols growing up. I want to fight you,” the youngster begged, a fearless grin plastered on his face.
Perplexed, Roberts could only say: “Leave me alone, kid.”
Today, David Clarkson has 88 NHL fights. Had Roberts not turned him down, he’d have 89.
“Gary always bugs me about that,” Clarkson says. “When I came into this league, I tried to fight anybody my buddies thought were cool or anybody I idolized as a kid. It was being young and silly maybe, but it was a respect thing. I loved the way Gary played, so I thought it would be cool to see my buddies back home and say, ‘I fought Gary Roberts!’ ”
The gloves remained on in that 2007-08 game. Roberts never did grant the rookie his Simba-versus-Scar confrontation, but Clarkson did earn his hero’s respect. “That’s just the kind of guy he is,” Roberts, who hated playing against Clarkson, said this past summer. “I truly believe he’s going to be a great player for the Maple Leafs and a leader in the dressing room. I love the way he plays.”
The way Clarkson, 29, plays is, in a word, hard. He’s six-foot-one, 200 pounds. Not huge, but he bangs, he crashes, he goes to the net. It’s a taxing heart-on-both-sleeves brand of hockey teammates love, fans worship and opponents despise. It’s loud and it hurts and it’s the stuff all championship teams need. But it can come at the expense of caution and safety and commonsense.
Clarkson’s most recent fight, a pre-season tilt against Buffalo’s John Scott, came with a 10-game, $269,000 price tag. Acting on an instinct to stick up for teammate Phil Kessel, Clarkson left the bench and was automatically banned. On Friday (Wendel Clark’s birthday) Clarkson made his delayed Leafs debut in Columbus. He didn’t fight, but we would’ve have been surprised if he did.
“I still like to do it. It’s part of the game. When my team’s down two or if one of my better players—or anybody on my team—gets hit, I’ll try to go out and address it,” Clarkson says. “I’m going to be hard to play against. I’m going to do all the stuff I’ve done my whole career. You’re going to see the same player I was in Jersey.”
When Clarkson joined the Devils, working his way up to the big club through the American Hockey League after being signed as an undrafted free agent in 2005, he was ready to punch the world if it meant realizing his dream.
Of the winger’s fights—the vast majority of which he’s won—47 came in his first two seasons. “I wanted to have an effect every night,” Clarkson says. “I learned fighting when I was young—not on the ice; I never fought on the ice when I was younger. It was something I picked up over the years working with different guys. You learn how to fight by fighting. Your first couple aren’t great, but you just get better and better.”
New to the league, he took losses to Chris Simon and Milan Lucic. Soon he was defeating the likes of Ian Laperriere and Brandon Prust. But even as he approaches the 100-career-goal mark and has earned respect for his stick, Clarkson says he’s just as happy to help the team with his fists.
Despite the broken knuckles, bloody noses and bruises—“I’ve had a bunch of things happen, but it’s all part of the game”—toughness has remained part of Clarkson’s game. Even in 2011-12, when he scored 30 goals, he had seven fights. Although he doesn’t drop the gloves as frequently as the kid who egged on Roberts, his record for the last three seasons is an impressive 16-4, with seven draws.
“Clarkson is obviously going to add some grit to our lineup up front. He plays the game hard,” says Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf. “I have a lot of respect for him and the way he plays the game. We’ve had our battles in the past [see below], but I’m really excited to have him as a teammate.”
It’s hard to recall a city falling this deep in love with a player who has yet to play a game for its team. Several fans have approached him this month and thanked him for sticking up for Kessel, 10-game ban be damned. Clarkson grew up in greater Toronto, and his dad bought him a Clark jersey as a boy. He wore it with pride.
“It wasn’t just Wendel,” Clarkson says. “Gary Roberts, Dougie Gilmour, all these guys who played with their heart every night—those are the guys I love. As athletes, there’s pressure on us. Yeah, we’re getting paid good money, but we gotta go out there and perform.”
Clarkson—who inked a whopping seven-year, $36.75-million deal this summer—insists he didn’t come home for the money. He liked what he saw of the Toronto’s drive to the playoffs. He called up Leafs past and present to discuss the media circus that surrounds the most popular team in the country. His gut told him this was the place; his mind told him to yank a sweater over the noise.
“I don’t really read the paper,” he says. “I don’t use the Internet too much.”
What he does is give it his all. That’s his hallmark.
“That’s all I can promise anybody,” he says. “I don’t think (the fans) are looking for a savior. I’m going to put my hardhat on and go to work.”