Clark talks Matthews, time with Maple Leafs in Q&A with NHL.com

In NHL.com's Q&A feature called "Sitting Down with …" we talk to key figures in the game, gaining insight into their lives on and off the ice. Today, we feature Toronto Maple Leafs icon Wendel Clark, the former captain and a current team ambassador who remains one of the most popular players in franchise history nearly 24 years after his final NHL game.

It's been mostly a pleasant five-hour return drive this season for Wendel Clark between his home in Muskoka, Ontario, and Scotiabank Arena in downtown Toronto. The miles seem fewer and the traffic lighter when the Maple Leafs are playing well, the team sitting third in the Atlantic Division heading into the final quarter of the schedule, a blistering 10-4-0 since the 2024 All-Star break.

“In and out four times a week,” Clark said with a laugh of his 135-mile drive from cottage country north of Toronto to Maple Leafs home games and other activities in which he participates as an energetic alumnus.

“I’ll drive home after the games, and the weather doesn’t matter. If it’s bad weather, even better -- nobody’s on the road… until you get into the city.”

The 57-year-old native of Kelvington, Saskatchewan, is a magnet for Leafs Nation faithful, one of 14 former players immortalized in bronze statues on Legends Row at the arena’s doors.

Clark played 608 of his 793 regular-season games for the Maple Leafs, seeing more action along the way with the Quebec Nordiques, New York Islanders, Tampa Bay Lightning, Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks.

Wendel Clark is interviewed during 2024 NHL All-Star Weekend in Toronto.

The fearless, hard-hitting forward had 564 points (330 goals, 234 assists) for his six teams from 1985-2000. But it was Clark’s 441 points for Toronto (260 goals, 181 assists), crushing physical play, by-example leadership and willingness to fight often well outside of his weight class that galvanized his reputation in his adopted city, Maple Leafs fans still flocking to the battleship nicknamed “Captain Crunch.”

Blue and white blood still courses through Clark’s veins, given his references to “we” when he speaks today of the team.

“We’ve played really well of late,” he said Saturday afternoon, setting off to attend Toronto’s 4-3 shootout win against the Metropolitan Division-leading New York Rangers. “It’s always a learning curve. We can score goals; we just have to learn to be patient and stay in the game when there’s not a lot of scoring.

“Playoff hockey gets a little tougher, a little rougher … our team’s not built to play rough, but you have to be able to play through it and be patient. Your best player isn’t getting two points every game in a seven-game playoff series.

Wendel Clark as captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs during the 1992-93 season, and his statue on Legends Row in Maple Leaf Square outside Scotiabank Arena.

“When they’re not getting points, you’ve got to learn to win 1-0 or 2-1, which means playing smart defensively, our defense being hard on their forwards, taking away the middle of the ice and making it easier for our goalie to see a shot versus having traffic in front.”

NHL.com caught up with Clark, in 2016 voted by a panel as No. 15 on the team’s centennial list of its 100 all-time greatest players, to talk about this season’s Maple Leafs, his ongoing role with them and what makes it special to play in the hockey-mad market of Toronto, win or lose.

Guessing it’s easier for you and fellow ambassadors Darryl Sittler, Doug Gilmour, Darcy Tucker and Curtis Joseph to work the crowds when the Maple Leafs are playing as well as they have been this season …

“(laughs) It’s way easier. The players here feel the heat from outside the glass, but for the ambassadors and all the alumni, we’re walking in the crowd all the time, handling all the questions head-on. We love when our team’s winning. We can praise the guys when Auston Matthews is putting the puck in the net, when Mitch Marner is passing great and the defense is playing well. We love being positive. We remember what it was like playing. Our job is really easy when our team’s winning because the fans are pumped and happy, and it’s always positive in the rink. We have a great alumni group, a great box at the rink and there’s always a lot of us around. The team has treated the alumni very well and we all like to be doing things.”

Captain Wendel Clark skates for the Toronto Maple Leafs during a 1994 game.

You lived many highs and lows in this market. It’s a roller coaster, no doubt, the franchise in 1967 winning its 13th Stanley Cup championship, 18 years before you arrived, but not having returned to the Final since that year. What was the best and worst thing in your day about playing for the Maple Leafs?

“The best was playing at home. In our days, Wednesday and Saturday were home games. There was nothing better than Maple Leaf Gardens, on Saturday especially. When things are going well, there’s nothing better than playing in Toronto. When they’re not, there’s probably nothing harder than playing in Toronto, or in Montreal. The fans in both cities know and care about the game, the media can take sides. It can be very hard if you’re not playing well, but that’s a part of taking what’s really good as well. Get a team like ours this year, when the team’s playing well, it’s just fun to play and to be around.”

Wendel Clark watches sculptor Erik Blome work on his statue at the latter’s studio in June 2017. The finished bronze product, 110 percent life size, would be unveiled on Maple Leafs Legends Row that October.

Let’s go back to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on June 15, 1985, the first time the NHL Draft had been held outside Montreal. The Maple Leafs chose you, a defenseman, No. 1 from the major-junior Saskatoon Blades and you’d arrive in the NHL that fall. How stressful was that day?

“I was probably the least nervous because I went No. 1. Everybody else had to wait to be picked. That probably kicked off the huge relationship I’ve had with the team, the fans and the city since then. I said that day that I thought of myself as a defenseman but would go to training camp with an open mind, ready to play wherever they wanted me, and I’ve thought of myself as a forward ever since. A couple other teams I’d interviewed with were looking for a defenseman to replace guys on their rosters. Who knows how things would have turned out had I gone elsewhere and remained on defense?”

Thirty-one years later, the Maple Leafs made forward Auston Matthews the No. 1 pick in the draft. Did you think he’d go first overall that day in Buffalo in 2016?

“Everyone pretty well knew that Auston was going to be the No. 1 pick. He was an immense talent who had done everything, playing professionally in Switzerland the year before he arrived here. Everyone knew how good a player he was and has continued to be.”

Wendel Clark (right) with fellow Maple Leafs legends Doug Gilmour (left) and Darryl Sittler before the 2016 NHL Rogers Centennial Classic Alumni Game at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.

Matthews won the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie in 2017, you were runner-up to Calgary’s Gary Suter in 1986. You and Matthews were both No. 1 picks and fan favorites in Toronto. What other similarities might there be, and what’s your take on Matthews today?

“Well, we both like to score goals. Auston has a great release and wrist shot. I had somewhat of a wrist shot, so that’s probably the closest comparison. He has way more goals than assists (352 goals, 269 assists), as I did. He plays a bit like me in that way, but he’s a way better finisher. Auston has a great drive to play. He’s really matured well as a player. Look at his intensity as he’s matured. He’s not scoring from the same spots; he knows he has to move and be in different places. And he’s so strong now. He’s hard for the defense to handle. He can go in from the left and score or score from a bad angle on the right side. He’s now hanging around the front of the net, putting in rebounds. He’s got the one-timer. He’s not one-dimensional by any means, he’s in all areas to score goals. And puck retrieval -- when he loses it, he’s going to take two strides, catch the guy and get the puck back. I don’t know if there’s anybody better or stronger than Auston. He always seems to have the puck flat and under control. That’s a skilled athlete when you can always make the puck look so calm out there.”

Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews with his four goal pucks scored Oct. 12, 2016, against the Ottawa Senators, his first NHL game, and in action in February 2024.

Your paths cross in the record book. The 34 goals you scored in your 1985-86 rookie season broke the 1917-18 franchise record of 29 set by Reg Noble in 1917-18, the NHL’s first season. Your record stood until Matthews scored 40 in his 2016-17 rookie year. But your 227 rookie-season penalty minutes leave Matthews’ 14 in the dust …

“Well, there’s a lot less fighting today than there was in my day. That’s just how the game has changed, not right or wrong. It’s never been faster or more skilled than it is today. I guess fans want to talk to me about the physicality of my time because there’s not as much of it today as there was in the 1980s, 1990s or early 2000s. The fans today don’t see that, so I hear a lot about it when they talk to me about it after having watched YouTube.”

Monday of this week was the 30th anniversary of your seventh of 12 career hat tricks, coming one game after you’d scored your sixth. Matthews has six this season alone, twice scoring hat tricks consecutively. When you’re in that zone, does it feel like you can’t help but score?

“When you’re a goal-scorer like Matthews, you’ll get them in bunches. Some games, you can have a great warmup and think it’ll be a great night, and then nothing happens. Another game, a bad warmup and you think it’s going to a long night and the puck follows you the whole game. For the best players -- Wayne Gretzky was the best ever -- the puck just seems to follow you. Matthews is in that category. They’re always in the right spot and they probably don’t even know why. They’re just so good at what they do. Hunches and intuition always put them in the right areas.”

Wendel Clark at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto on Dec. 28, 2016, as the rink is prepared for the 2017 NHL Scotiabank Centennial Classic.

Any idea how many Gordie Howe Hat Tricks you had in your career, for a goal, assist and a fight in a game?

“(laughs) Never thought about it. No idea.”

Eight. Seven in the regular season, including Nov. 15, 1986, against the Detroit Red Wings with a goal, assist and two fights, 26 penalty minutes total. Matthews has none. Your career-high 271 penalty minutes in your second season lays waste to the 98 minutes that Matthews has picked up his entire career …

“And that’s the way it should be! Auston is too good, too valuable to our team to be in the penalty box. We don’t want him to have any Gordie Howes. Just have him concentrate on being good, which he does better than anybody.”

Maybe your most famous hat trick was playing three different times for the Maple Leafs -- starting and ending your career with them, with another tour of duty in between.

“(laughs) I was like a bad habit for the Maple Leafs; I just kept coming back. I don’t know whether that was a bad omen. It was a privilege for me to come back and finish here as I did. My body wore out at 32 or 33, but to play in Toronto three separate times and still do what I do here all these years later is a huge honor.”

Top photo: Wendel Clark has a laugh as he suits up for the 2019 Hockey Hall of Fame Legends Classic in Toronto.