Chris Clark Always Ready for the Unexpected

It’s not often you hear a NHL general manager say he told his AHL counterpart, ‘I’m sorry, we screwed you’ in reference to calling players up from the farm team. However, this is exactly what was said during Jarmo Kekalainen’s end of season interview for the Columbus Blue Jackets on April 15.  

With the Jackets setting a franchise record of 563 man-games lost, the Cleveland Monsters saw their roster consistently depleted due to the amount of players who were called up to the NHL this season. In fact, with the exception of defender Ole Julian Bjorgvik-Holm, everyone on a two-way NHL contract was elevated from the Monsters to the Jackets this season. 

Kekalainen being openly remorseful about decimating Cleveland’s roster shows the strong professional relationship he has with Chris Clark, the Monsters GM. After hearing the things Kekalainen has said about Cleveland’s staff and knowing what Clark can do with a roster, it’s pretty easy to see why they both have the highest respect and confidence in one another. 

One of the areas Clark excels is his ability to find the diamond in the rough when it comes to players. He knows what skills will work or are needed for the Monsters’ roster to succeed and will look under every rock in the hockey world to find it. From playmaker Zach Jordan of the University of Nebraska-Omaha, to a highly intelligent and gritty defender playing for the WBS Pens by the name of Billy Sweezey, Clark consistently brings the pleasantly unexpected to the great city of Cleveland, Ohio. 

Other Monsters News

• Chris Clark Always Ready for the Unexpected
• Faceoffs Help Cleveland Continue Race for Playoffs
• Billy Sweezey: Wicked Smart, Wicked Tough
• Defending the Blue Line with Mike Haviland
• The Good and Bad of Cleveland’s Overtime Loss to Grand Rapids

With all of this in mind, I decided to sit down with Clark at the end of the season to pick his brain about being a general manager of an AHL team which has been bare bones the past few seasons. 

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Full Press Coverage: In Jarmo’s end of season interview, he openly admitted that the Jackets “screwed” the Monsters this season with all the injuries and call-ups. That’s not something you typically hear a NHL GM publicly admit. Tell me a little bit about that. 

Chris Clark: I think the main purpose of any American League team is to support our NHL team. That’s why we have all of our prospects here. Our main focus is partly winning, but the most important part is developing our prospects. So, in a normal year, we want a prospect to go up and fill in seamlessly and help Columbus if they have an injury or two. 

This year was just a little out of the ordinary where the injury bug went through the team like the flu did.

FPC: How would you rate development this season, or in general, with the amount of call-ups the team experienced? 

CC: It’s happened a couple of times since I’ve been in the organization where it does. I think four or five years ago, it kept us (Columbus) in the playoff race. There was a December where all the players in Columbus got injured or hurt. Our guys went up there, filled in, and kept them in the playoff race and really saved the season. 

I think this year was a little different because of the amount of injuries. But you know our guys, maybe some of the guys who might not normally have gotten the chance, really showed what they could do and some even got an extended chance up there. 

It’s great for confidence. It’s great for us to evaluate. You can take little bright spots out of a really tough season. So, that’s the thing that I take out of it as well – that we get to see some of our players play. 

FPC: Do you think it hurts development when they have to call them up so much? Or does it give you a chance to see what the guys down here are going to be able to do? Who is actually going to be ready, even mindset wise? 

CC: It’s always one of those things you tell the guys. You never know. You’ll get a chance. You never know when it’s going to be. You always have to be ready for that chance. You have to be in the mindset that you might be called up tomorrow.

So, am I doing the right things tonight? Am I doing the right things to prepare for my chance? Chances come few and far between for some players because we might have seasons where really nobody gets hurt. But, there might be that one opportunity to go up and fill in, and that might be it. That might be your break to become an NHL player. 

For us down here, that’s our constant work. We are trying to make sure they are ready for when that chance comes. A lot of guys got that opportunity. 

FPC : How do you approach the season knowing that it could be like this season, or it could be like five years ago where literally no one could ever get called up? 

CC : You never know. Like I said, it’s our job to make sure our players are ready for that chance. So, if it doesn’t happen, maybe we have a much better team down here. Which is great, because we try to split the development with the winning as well. Development is what our job is and we need to get these players up. But, winning and having a winning culture from the ground up is part of developing really good players as well.

FPC: You are really good at finding an absolute diamond in the rough that no one has even thought about. How do you find players midseason to sign to PTOs? Do you come in and know who you want to pick from? Or do you just figure it out as the season goes on and see what’s out there? 

CC: A little of both. At the beginning of the year, we have our guys that are slated for Kalamazoo. So, we have a little bit of a reserve. But that really went within the first month. All those guys really weren’t with them too much. 

Throughout the season, I’m keeping up with agents. I’m talking to some of these coast league teams. We have a lot that are around here. A lot of just me watching and talking to other GMs around the league and what they have available or what they might have available where they are willing to give up. It’s how we got Alex Whelan. He’s been a really good player for us. He just didn’t have the opportunity in Hartford. I’ve seen him a few times and I said, ‘Yeah, this is something we can definitely give him the opportunity here’, and he’s done a really great job.

FPC: Do you ever have any say in who gets to go up? So, if they’re missing a forward, do they ever come to you and say, ‘Is there anyone that you think would slot in?’

CC: That’s exactly how it works. 

There might be a ‘We need a right handed defensemen. We need a fourth line center. We need something very specific.’ But for the most part, it’s who’s been your best player. So, Jarmo will talk usually after every game or I’ll see him the next morning. But it’s, ‘Who’s good? Who’s your top three?’

If something happens that game, I might get the call during the game like, ‘Hey we need a center. Who’s your best center?’ or ‘We just need a forward. Who’s your best?’

I’m here 90% of the time, but I’m always in constant contact with Vogey if I’m not. Same thing I’m talking to Vogey after a game if I’m not there personally. So it’s, ‘Hey, who was your best?’ because I need to have that answer for Jarmo right away. Because a lot of times it’s, “All right, we need to get them going at this point’. 

The communication is always, ‘Who is your best player?”