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Brandt Clarke turned around the Barrie Colts’ season. He’s not your typical NHL returnee to junior hockey

The day he returned from the Los Angeles Kings in January, Brandt Clarke changed the complexion of the Barrie Colts. Now he’ll try to have a similar impact on the Ontario Hockey League playoffs.

When the Colts open their post-season Thursday night at home against the Hamilton Bulldogs, they’ll be leaning heavily on the former Don Mills Flyer by way of Ottawa. And they’re hoping Clarke can affect the balance of power in the playoffs the way he did in the final two-and-a-half months of the season.

“He makes everybody better,” Colts GM-coach Marty Williamson said of the star defenceman who helped Barrie finish third in the Eastern Conference. “He’s just elevated our whole team. For our level, it’s like having a (Connor) McDavid.”

That’s some pretty high praise, but it’s well-earned for the eighth overall pick in the 2021 NHL draft.

While the Colts muddled along without Clarke through the first half of the season, with no certainty of whether or when he’d return, they considered being a seller at the league’s Jan. 10 trade deadline.

But that all changed when Clarke was loaned to the Canadian world junior team, where he won a gold medal before being returned to Barrie. With renewed optimism, the Colts instead beefed up at the deadline by acquiring defenceman Braden Haché and left winger Tyler Savard.

And the results, for both Clarke and the Colts, have been remarkable.

Clarke scored 23 goals and 61 points in 31 games, finishing fourth among OHL defencemen in goals and fifth in points despite playing only half a season. In fact, the 20-year-old finished fifth among defencemen in goals in the 60-team Canadian Hockey League and his 1.97 points per game was easily the best among blueliners. And of the 31 games Clarke played he failed to record a point in only four of them and he finished the season on a 16-game point streak.

The Colts, meanwhile, racked up a 23-7-3 mark after Clarke’s return and their 49 points after the trade deadline tied the Sarnia Sting for best in the league.

A big reason why Clarke has had such an enormous impact? He bucked the trend of star teenagers moping and struggling after returning from NHL stints.

Despite the fact he spent the first two months of the season making NHL money and living the NHL life, Clarke was spending more time in the press box than on the ice. He played just nine games with the Kings and five in the American Hockey League. So Clarke was thrilled to come back to a place where he could play a lot and have a real impact, which isn’t as common among star players as you might think.

“I didn’t want to take it as a negative,” Clarke said. “There are some guys who can take it the wrong way and be p—ed off and think they’re too good to be here. But that’s not me. I’m the captain of this team and wanted to help this team on a playoff push and I think that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m just really happy with my overall play and I think both me and the team are peaking at the right time.”

Clarke was left off the roster for Canada’s world junior team in the summer of 2022 for the COVID-delayed tournament in Edmonton but was a big part of the team four months later in Halifax for the 2023 event, recording eight points — including two assists in Canada’s 3-2 overtime win over Czechia in the gold-medal game.

There have been some maturity concerns with Clarke, but his time with the Kings really fostered his growth in part because he lived with the family of former Kings goaltender and two-time Stanley Cup winner Jonathan Quick.

“He’s one of those kids who loves playing hockey, every second of it,” said Kings director of amateur scouting Mark Yannetti. “Every time he goes on the ice, instead of pouting, he’s like, ‘I’m going to score.’ I’ve never seen a kid come back to junior when he arguably has a legitimate case to be on the NHL team and do what he has done.”

That’s what has the Colts optimistic about their chances, even in this year’s deep playoff field. Along with the Ottawa 67’s and North Bay Battalion, the Colts are among the powerhouse teams in the Eastern Conference, with the Windsor Spitfires, London Knights and Sting as the juggernauts in the Western Conference.

“We have a really good team and we have all the confidence in the world going into this playoff run,” said Clarke, who missed the Colts’ first-round playoff ouster last season after undergoing knee surgery. “It’s going to be good.”

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