- Wendel Clark and Barry Melrose were cousins from Kelvington, Saskatchewan, born 11 years apart
- Clark shared memories of summer fastball, the 1986 Gardens brawl and the 1993 Game 7 handshake
- Read below for what Clark says made his cousin such a hit on TV
Wendel Clark lost his cousin this week.
The Maple Leafs legend spoke with Dave Stubbs of NHL.com on Thursday about Barry Melrose, who died Wednesday at 70 after a three-year fight with Parkinson’s disease. They grew up 11 years apart in Kelvington, Saskatchewan, and the memory Clark keeps returning to has nothing to do with a rink.
Clark was asked what Melrose was like as a teammate, and he went straight to summer ball:
“Barry was the leader of our group of 10 or so guys who every summer played fastball in the small towns of Saskatchewan. We were always together as a group and Barry was the focus on that team. He was catcher, I pitched and played shortstop, my brother Don played first base and (fellow NHL veteran) Joey Kocur played third. Barry was the guy. I’ve never seen anyone hit a fastball the way he could, and he was still using a wood bat when everyone else had switched to aluminum.”
“I can imagine him as a hockey teammate. He was just a great guy.”
Melrose played 173 of his 300 NHL games in Toronto, which is where Clark first watched him up close as a kid at the Barry Melrose Hockey School. Clark signed on there as an instructor at 16.
Their NHL careers overlapped for exactly one season, and it produced a wild night at Maple Leaf Gardens on Jan. 13, 1986. Clark, a rookie, collided with Melrose behind the net. Both benches emptied, and the mess ran almost 19 minutes before order returned in a 7-4 Toronto win.
Here’s how Clark described that night to 650 CKOM in Saskatoon:
“It might have been the three Kelvington guys involved in the last bench-clearing brawl in Toronto. Barry and I collided behind the net in Toronto by the Zamboni entrance, we got taken to the penalty box. All heck broke loose and Barry and I spent the time talking in the penalty box about the mayhem that was going on.”
Seven years later they met on that same ice as opponents again. Melrose coached the Kings past Toronto in Game 7 of the 1993 Campbell Conference Final on May 29, and the cousins shook hands before Los Angeles moved on to face Montreal.
Take a look back at the night Melrose sent Toronto home:
Ask Clark why his cousin worked so well on ESPN and he points straight back home to the prairies.
“He brought the casualness, he wore the fancy suits with the mullet and the great hockey language describing the game. He just loved the game and put it in his own words. Everybody loved to listen to him talk about it.”
His junior career started with the SJHL’s Weyburn Red Wings in 1973-74, where he piled up 162 penalty minutes in 50 games. That club posted its own tribute Thursday:
Kelvington gets called Canada’s Hockey Factory, and Clark figures Melrose is the reason anyone from there believed the NHL was reachable.
“Barry was the first guy I saw leaving Kelvington ahead of me that I can remember,” Clark said. “He was somebody we looked up to, to strive to do what he did.”
Melrose left Kelvington for 300 NHL games, a trip to the Stanley Cup Final behind the Kings bench and a run on ESPN that started in 1996.
