#blarkie

early life: born in ottawa, ontario on feb 9, 2003. neither of his parents are really hockey significant, but he has an older brother, graeme clarke, and younger sister, mackenzie clarke, who both play. graeme was drafted #80 overall to the devils where he played mostly for their ahl team for four seasons. he was then traded to the iowa wild, then the hershey bears, then the belleville senators where he is now. mackenzie played for the ottawa lady senators, then joined the st. lawrence university team, then went back to the ottawa senators u22 team in the owhl, before rejoining the st. lawrence team this past year.

growing up, his family had season tickets for the senators and he was a big fan. there’s a clip of him and his brother on the jumbotron in 2009 (when he was six). his favorite player was jason spezza because he scored a hat trick on his birthday.

he moved to the toronto area when he was around 12/13 to play on the don mills flyers in the gthl. he played there for three seasons before being drafted into the ohl.

playstyle: he is the definition of an offensive defenseman. when jim hiller said five forward pp he was like when you say five forward pp can it be five forwards and brandt clarke? so five forwards and brandt clarke pp!

he has a great hockey iq and only kind of recently was trusted with qb-ing the pp2, but if the kings are smart he will be qb of pp1 this year. he jumps into the rush a lot and is willing to take caluclated risks.

strong with passing and good at skating. while he’s not going to be constantly laying on hits, he LOVES to try to fight. they do not let him because he’s best serving the team not in the box, but when he does he gets so excited.

a particular favorite blarkie moment of mine is when he got into it with quinn hughes.

ohl: he was drafted 4oa by the barrie colts in 2019, but the season got cut because of covid. his number was 55 because he liked how it looked on him apparently.

his first goal in the ohl came on january 24, 2020. he is a man who LOVES to celebrate by jumping into his teammates’ arms which has not changed.

he led all rookie defensemen (6 g - 32 a - 38 p), then made all rookie team!

in 2020-2021, season was cancelled for covid, so he went to play in slovakia with graeme to hc nové zámsky. he only played 23 games there.

when the season started for 2021-2022, he was named captain of the barrie colts. he had a pretty good season, ending with 59 points.

for his final season in the ohl, 2022-2023, he returned after playing some games down with the kings and the reign and had frankly a great run. in 31 games played, he got 61 p. he also got his first OHL career hat trick in a game against the saginaw spirit, ending the night with a high of four points. (two of those were empty netters but still counts).

this failed michigan of his is also funny to me because he was so ready to do his classic leg up celly and they said it didn’t go in.

this season, he beat the record for most points by a defenseman on the colts by hitting 158 points with 40 g and 118 a. (he has since been overtaken by kashawn aitcheson). he also had the second highest points-per-game average in ohl history at 1.97 points-per-game.

international play: besides his stint playing in slovakia, he participated in some tournaments representing team canada at the international level.

in 2020-2021, he played on the canada u18 team at wjc-18. other notable players on this team were connor bedard, logan stankoven, olen zellweger, dylan guenther, wyatt johnston, and former ontario reign teammate, francesco pinelli! they won gold and he was named to the media all-stars team.

in 2022, he went with canada’s u20 team to the wjc-20. they also won gold this year! he finished in the top 15 of players with a total of 8 points and netted an assist on the final game-winning goal.

nhl: prior to being drafted, he was on the devils’ radar for their 4oa pick. ultimately, they drafted someone else and lucky kings! we got our clarkie at 8oa!

while in the ohl he wore 55, he couldn’t because quinton byfield wears 55, so he chose 92 because it was his brother’s number. he thought it was cool that they could share the number, but also his birthday is 2/9 (9/2 if you’re not north american about it).

he was the seventh youngest defenseman to make an opening night roster. he played the full nine games that he was allowed before being sent back to the minors and netted like two points.

then he went back to the ohl. next season, he bounced between ontario and the nhl before finally making the roster on a permanent basis in the 24-25 season.

in 25-26, he played a full 82 games and got 40 points. it’s a good start and the la kings clearly know they have something special too because he was recently extended on a 5x7.4m contract.

i’m blarkina down and hope this has made y’all woke to his wonders, he’s going to do great things in the league !