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Fourth in Calder Trophy voting (for rookie of the year) in his 46-point rookie season, he received consideration for the Hart Trophy (MVP) the next season, when he had 63 points. If Clarke's first two NHL seasons were unremarkable in terms of points, he attracted much attention while steadily growing. He'd never skate one game as a minor league pro. He'll right away be our best player.' Melnyk's insistence got Flyers executives to contact a Philadelphia doctor, who concurred with the Mayo Clinic verdict. When the Flyers' second-round pick came up, scout Gerry Melnyk piped up at the draft table, saying: 'I don't give a damn if this kid's got one leg he's the best player I've seen at this level. Regardless, every NHL team passed on him in the first round of the 1969 NHL Draft, concerned about his illness. Ginnell would show their findings to any scout coming to watch Clarke. Ginnell believed otherwise and took Clarke to the Mayo Clinic, where doctors attested Clarke could indeed play in the NHL as long as he took proper care of himself. Still, Clarke suspected his diabetes would limit his career, scaring off NHL clubs.

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'If you were afraid, he made you go out there and do things.' Whatever those 'things' may have been, he learned how to handle himself against bigger foes and led the league in scoring twice, setting assists and points records, largely by feeding big-shooting wing Reggie Leach. 'He made you play with courage,' Clarke said. And just practice hard every single day,' Clarke told his daughter Jakki for her book, 'Flyer Lives.' '… And we learned that if you were going to have any success, it was because you had to work.'Ĭlarke absorbed another of Ginnell's important lessons: how to survive the rugged and wild Western Canadian Junior Hockey League (now WHL), where intimidation tactics ruled. 'Every day he just made us work - just skate and skate and skate. Ginnell liked the whole package and he became a primary influence on Clarke's career. He could skate all day and he was one of those players the puck seemed to follow around, a sure sign of good hockey instincts. The skinny kid with big glasses and big teeth may have been a diabetic, but Ginnell recognized he never lacked energy. He had already seen Clarke play 40 minutes a game in youth hockey. The round trip took four days, but those skates, he believed, would help him get a spot on the roster.īombers coach Patty Ginnell didn't need much convincing. But at 16, weeks before his tryout with the junior Flin Flon Bombers, he took the money he saved from working all summer at the town's only gas station and hitchhiked south to Brandon and back, having found a shoemaker who custom-made skates. He'd worn only hand-me-down skates during his entire youth hockey career. 13, 1949, he played his hockey mostly outdoors until he was around 9. 'If Bobby Clarke were a sewer digger in Flin Flon,' said Fred Shero, his coach during the Cup years, 'he'd be the best sewer digger and hardest worker.'įlin Flon, the northern Manitoba mining town called 'The City Built on Rocks,' was Clarke's home. So I could at least demand from other people that they work hard because I would always be able to do that.' The rest of the time, I wasn't that good at anything else, but playing and practicing, that's what I loved to do.

'I loved to practice and I loved to play.

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'I loved to get on the ice,' he said on the 'Legends of Hockey' TV series. He made sure those who skated with him did just that. The glue that bonded the two sides of Clarke's game was an incomparable work ethic, a personality trait to which all Flyers had to measure up. Rather - as with Ted Lindsay and the young Stan Mikita, two small, exceptional NHL players who preceded him - Clarke's talent and truculence were inseparable. On the other hand, he could also be a vicious stickman, a cheap-shot artist and an incorrigible instigator.īut his was no split personality. On one hand, he was a supreme playmaker, a crafty and timely goal-scorer, an indefatigable checker, a virtuoso faceoff specialist - a complete player. Like the club he sparked to consecutive Stanley Cup championships in 19, Clarke combined high-level skill with high-level antagonism. Nearly a half-century after he first pulled that Philadelphia Flyers sweater over his head, Clarke remains one of the great leaders in the history of the sport and the player who helped give a franchise its identity. Video: Bobby Clarke led Flyers to back-to-back Stanley Cups

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