Hats off to Ryan Clowe! He’s a beast of a hockey player and I was fortunate enough to meet him. I was finishing up my undergraduate degree and trying my hardest to break into the hockey writing business. I walked to the Bradley Center that day in downtown Milwaukee still kind of new to what I was doing. This was in early 2006 I always figured you just walk into a place and keep your mouth shut and you can get away with just about anything (though I was allowed to be there that morning).
It was the morning skate for the Cleveland Barons who were set to take on the Milwaukee Admirals that night. I walked down 4th St. drinking my coffee arriving at the arena ready to go. I had set up an interview with a teammate of Clowe’s named Brad Staubitz. The Cleveland press guy was just amazing and made me feel more than welcome. It was quite a thrill watching a professional hockey team practice though it was only the minor leagues and most of the players including Clowe are younger than me. At this point I had only seen maybe three practices like this one. The Barons press guy told me Staubitz would be a fun interview and that he was but in hindsight it was my five minutes sitting on the Cleveland bench with Clowe that I remember just as well.
My way of thinking at the time was to interview AHL rookies figuring if anyone is going to run an article from me I better make it one of the guys in their first season. Given this I went over the Cleveland roster and determined Staubitz was my best choice. Clowe was in his third pro season and in the midst of cracking the roster in San Jose with the big club. I remember writing about him during the lockout when I covered hockey prospects for a website but didn’t really think a sixth-round selection could have an impact in the NHL. And maybe I was right. Clowe wound up playing 18 games in 2005-06 and only recorded two assists. In the AHL, he was a point-per-game player.
So if you’ve ever been to a morning skate you know it’s pretty much a light workout, some drills, nothing too different than when I played for my high school except the talent level was 1 million times higher. As with any practice in any sport I stopped paying attention midway through. The players on the ice were very responsive to me and just nice guys in general. Most of them had no clue why I was there. Then this big hulking kid comes out from the locker room area and sits near me on the bench. We got to talking and it turned out it was Clowe.
It was more or less a five minute throwaway conversation but we discussed things about hockey, the U.S. and Canada and where we grew up. Being from New York couldn’t have been more different than being from Clowe’s native New Foundland. I had never met a “Newfie” before and at first I couldn’t quite understand him with his heavy “Newfie” accent. If you have never heard it think a combination of Scottish and English with the words spoken five times faster. I remember he told me how he liked it there and I thought how interesting his life was considering he got to travel all over the continent. When we finished speaking we wished each other well and went on with our lives. I interviewed Staubitz and got the article printed in The Sarnia Observer making myself $50 in the process. But all these years later it’s my conversation with Clowe I remember. I asked Staubitz about a player named Steve Bernier, a first-rounder by the Sharks who I thought we be a major star. Staubitz told me that Bernier wasn’t coming back. As silly as it seems now, at the time I would have rather talked with Bernier (who I have never met).
Clowe broke into the NHL full-time in 2006-07 and has twice hit the 20 goal plateau. I was watching Game 4 the other night in the San Jose/Detroit series. With Detroit leading at the final faceoff Clowe lined up with Detroit’s Justin Abdelkader and proceeded to pummel him. It made me think of that conversation we had that day and how funny it is that a guy who is not much different than me who I spoke with five years prior was out there. There must be this competitive spark that ignites when you step out onto the ice because when I met him he was a very polite, respectful person who seemed not to have any violent inclinations. For all the Sharks’ postseason disappointments Clowe has been awesome in the playoffs. Hopefully things will only get better for him and one day we can speak once more.
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