by Barry Stagg
January 2000
**Internet published only**
This is a reprised ( re-run actually) column from August 1994. Given the Leafs interest in signing free agent Wendel Clark, it is interesting to look back at the controversial event that took him from Toronto in the first place.
Wendel Clark owes Toronto nothing. Never has an athlete left town after a trade with less debt owing to the team that brought him to the National Hockey League. When Clark was traded by Leaf General Manager Cliff Fletcher, he walked away after giving nine years of gristle, bone, heart, and health to a Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team that often did not deserve the effort that he gave nevertheless. Wendel Clark is a true hockey icon and stands as a classic hero to young hockey fans of the Leafs and indeed exemplifies good, tough Canadian hockey.
Many a Toronto Maple Leafs fan will be marking down on the calendar the date of Quebec Nordiques October visit to Maple Leaf Gardens. There will be an emotional welcome for Wendel Clark as his fans give Wendel his proper farewell: on the ice in front of a full house at Maple Leaf Gardens. It won't be the last time that Wendel Clark comes through Toronto, but the next time he does he will be coming through as an enemy missile with Leaf fans and Leaf players knowing full well that Wendel will be cutting no corners and pulling no punches when he has the opportunity and the obligation to go in the corner and flatten Doug Gilmour.
Over the years the Leafs have managed through one type of misfortune or another to trade or lose their captains. The departure of Clark is really the only time where the player and the team parted on such good and honourable terms. Clark took the honest and workmanlike approach to his trade that has characterized him during his entire hockey career. Rather than whine and complain about Quebec, about speaking French and about high taxes, he simply indicated that he would be taking his hockey bag and heading off to a new team, glad to still be playing hockey and being paid for it.
Like Darryl Sittler and Lanny MacDonald, Clark will now go on to finish his career on foreign ice. Like MacDonald, he has a chance to be on a Stanley Cup winner since the Nordiques are a young powerful club who will be replacing the traded Mats Sundin with an equally formidable Swedish centre named Peter Forsberg. With Clark and tough Irish-born winger Owen Nolan providing scoring power and belligerence, the likes of centres Forsberg and Joe Sakic will have every opportunity to pile up points and victories for the Nordiques.
There is, as always, a Newfoundland note to this saga. Clark will now be on the same roster as Newfoundlander Dwayne Norris. Norris is another Canadian hero from his junior days and he, like Clark, has brought his talent and his English-Canadian roots to Quebec without complaint. Indeed the only complaint that Norris has made about the Nordiques is their decision to send him to the minors last year after he initially joined the club from the Canadian Olympic team. Norris brings character and quality to a team that now has added gallons of that vital stuff in the form of Wendel Clark and his trade partner, defenceman Sylvain Lefebvre.
Another more obscure, but potentially important Newfoundland angle on the Nordiques hockey club is that they chose to take Stephenville native Chris Pittman in the junior draft. Pittman toiled with the Kitchener Rangers in the OHL last season. While his numbers were not great, he will have a chance to develop as a draft pick of the Nordiques. Hopefully this young prospect, who has the size to make it as a National Hockey League forward, can benefit from the infusion of character, grit and responsibility that Wendel Clark, Sylvain Lefebvre and Olympian Dwayne Norris bring to the Quebec organization.
There will be many Quebec Nordiques fans in English Canada this year and English speaking players from Saskatchewan and Newfoundland will have a role to play in bringing national unity to the hockey rink if not elsewhere.
Until next month, be proud, be prosperous.