If you ask the average hockey fan, they probably couldn’t name the goaltending coach for their favourite team. But Vancouver Canucks fans are very familiar with Ian Clark’s name.
Clark has been the Canucks’ goaltending coach for the past six years and helped develop Thatcher Demko into one of the best goaltenders in the NHL. Demko saw Clark as so instrumental to his success that, when Clark’s contract was up in 2021, Demko practically begged the Canucks to re-sign him.
“Clarkie is unbelievable. I owe probably just about everything to him,” said Demko at the time. “Obviously, I’m putting in the work, but the way he’s guided me and mentored me, it’s been amazing. I desperately hope that they can figure something out and have him return.”
This season, however, Clark won’t be on the ice to coach Demko. In fact, there’s a chance that he won’t even be in the Canucks’ organization.
“I think that it’s known that Clark may move on with the Canucks’ blessing, I think they’re not going to stand in the way here if an opportunity opens for him,” said Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on the 32 Thoughts Podcast.
“I will not be surprised if the Canucks give him permission to talk to other teams,” said ChekTV’s Rick Dhaliwal. “Now we’re hearing he’s been linked to the [New Jersey] Devils. I could throw some teams out there, but I’m not going to…There’s a lot of teams that would love to get their hands on this guy.”
What happened?
“It was his decision"
Let’s start with the reason why Clark won’t be on the ice: health.
At 58 years old, Clark had begun to struggle with the day-to-day rigour of coaching on the ice. A goaltending coach needs to be physical on the ice, frequently going down to his knees to demonstrate stances and drills, and Clark’s body has been feeling the wear and tear in recent years.
“It was his decision,” said Dhaliwal. “Let’s get one thing straight: it was him going to the Canucks and saying, ‘My shoulders, my knees, I can’t do the goalie coach every day.’”
It’s a shame, because Clark is an exceptional communicator and teacher on the ice. One of my favourite videos the Canucks have ever produced was a 10-minute video of Clark mic’d up working with Demko at practice. It’s a brilliant look at both the practical drills and mental philosophy of Clark’s approach.
It was necessary, then, for Clark to step back from on-ice coaching. In his place stepped Marko Torenius, who Clark brought into the Canucks’ organization in 2022 to coach the team’s goaltenders in the AHL with the Abbotsford Canucks, as well as work with the team’s prospect development.
The Finnish coach previously worked for SKA St. Petersburg in the KHL, where he worked with the Nashville Predators’ top goaltending prospect Yaroslav Askarov and Carolina Hurricanes projected number one goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov.
It was always thought that Torenius might replace Clark when he stepped away from his on-ice coaching duties and Torenius has already done some excellent work over the past two years with Arturs Silovs and Nikita Tolopilo.
So, stepping away from coaching on the ice was a mutual decision between Clark and the Canucks. It’s my understanding that what happened next, however, was not mutual.
"He shouldn't be a goalie scout"
In 2021, when the Canucks re-signed Clark to a new contract, he was promoted to a more significant role than simply goaltending coach. He was made director of goaltending.
In recent years, many teams around the NHL have started committing more resources to one of the most important positions on the ice and have put together entire goaltending departments with multiple coaches, development staff, and scouts. Respected goaltending coaches like Mitch Korn, Bill Ranford, and Benoit Allaire have headed up these departments.
As director of goaltending, Clark oversaw all elements of the goaltending position, from direct on-ice coaching to development to scouting.
It’s my understanding that when Clark approached the Canucks about stepping back from his on-ice role, he expected to continue in the same overall leadership role. That’s what his contemporary, Benoit Allaire, did this offseason with the New York Rangers, scaling back his day-to-day coaching but retaining the director of goaltending title and role.
Instead, Clark’s new role with the Canucks is goaltending scout and goaltending development coach.
It’s hard to see that as anything other than a demotion.
“Look at his resume and respect around the league and you tell me he should be a goalie scout,” said Dhaliwal. “He shouldn’t be a goalie scout. He should be the director of goaltending, is what he should be. I think that’s the title he wanted, but the Canucks gave him the title of goalie scout. He wasn’t even at training camp, why was he not at training camp to keep an eye on all the goalies?”
As a result, both Friedman and Dhaliwal have suggested the relationship between the Canucks and Clark has grown estranged.
“I don’t think the relationship is in a good state. I think it’s definitely soured,” said Dhaliwal. “There’s a lot of things at play here. One is the demotion to goalie scout.”
"This business of hockey can be cruel at times"
The timing of Clark’s demotion is interesting, as it comes after his protege had the best season of his career but also dealt with two serious knee injuries, one of them an extremely unlikely injury that ended his playoffs after just one game.
In the 2023-24 season, Thatcher Demko had a career-best .918 save percentage, was named a Second Team All-Star, and was the runner-up for the Vezina Trophy as the league’s best goaltender. It was a career year that came under the day-to-day tutelage of Clark.
This wouldn’t be the first time, however, that a team with Jim Rutherford at the helm made a surprise change with a goaltending coach after a successful season.
When Rutherford was the general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins, he fired goaltending coach Mike Bales the day after the Penguins’ Stanley Cup parade — their second of back-to-back Stanley Cups. Both of those Cup runs saw outstanding goaltending performances by both Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury under Bales’ coaching.
"I wasn’t expecting that coming off two Cups in a row," said Bales at the time. “This business of hockey can be cruel at times…Sometimes if things aren’t working out, the organization gets a new goaltender, and they weren’t happy with their goaltending coach, they may ask the goaltender who they like…If it’s a good fit for the team and the coaching staff, they’ll make changes. I don’t think it’s very common what happened here.”
That change didn’t work out particularly well for the Penguins, as Murray’s game went on an immediate decline under the coach that replaced Bales, Mike Buckley, who had coached Murray previously in the AHL. The Penguins' goaltending turned into one of their most significant weaknesses.
Hopefully, that particular sequence of events won't repeat itself in Vancouver.
Did Ian Clark overwork Thatcher Demko?
The other aspect to consider is Demko’s injuries.
Demko has dealt with multiple injuries throughout his career. Even when he played a career-high 64 games in 2021-22, his season was ended by a right knee injury that required surgery. He was limited to just 32 games the following season by a groin injury, then dealt with two knee injuries last season.
There have been some suggestions that Demko’s injury troubles may have been exacerbated by a heavy workload, not just in terms of games played but in terms of practices.
Clark has made no bones about working his goaltenders hard. In fact, it’s a core part of his coaching philosophy.
“It starts with the non-negotiable items,” said Clark in a rare interview in 2021. “I really have two...you play the most critical role on the team — I think we can all agree that is often the case for the goaltending position — and so it would only make sense that you’re going to be our hardest worker. It would make no sense whatsoever for the guy that plays that critical role not to be the team’s hardest worker.
“The same goes for competitiveness. I expect them to be the fiercest competitor on the team; I expect them to be the hardest worker.”
“When I sit down with a goalie, they have to embrace those ideals,” he added, “and everything else for me is essentially up for negotiation. But those two are not.”
Demko has embraced that philosophy of being the hardest worker on the team but that has perhaps been to his detriment. That’s something even Demko had to admit at the start of this year’s training camp.
"I think it comes down to a little bit of maturity," said Demko. "I just kind of have one gear and that's just to go as hard as I can and try to get better every day. I'm just learning there's different ways to get better and maintain your system of play and make sure that you stay sharp and, at the same time, take care of your body.
"I've done a lot of work, working with consultants and things like that this summer to address that. Just kind of picking people's brains about different ways to go about it. It's something that I'm well aware of and something that I'm confident that I can implement this year."
While this is speculation, one has to wonder if the Canucks’ management team felt the need to take more of a leadership role with the team’s goaltending in hopes of avoiding Demko and the team’s other goaltenders getting overworked in the future. Did they feel a need to avoid giving Clark carte blanche in a director of goaltending role?
It’s also important to note that it’s entirely speculative how much Clark’s practice regimen has had to do with Demko’s injuries in his career. Injuries are unpredictable — Clark’s practice workload may have had nothing to do with Demko’s injuries.
Even before he was drafted, Demko’s health was a concern: he had labrum tears in his hips that required surgery. That’s part of why he fell to the Canucks in the second round.
The last time Ian Clark left the Canucks worked out well
If Clark gets offered a director of goaltending role with another team, it wouldn’t be surprising at this point for him to leave the Canucks organization.
Clark leaving the organization has happened before, of course. Clark was the Canucks’ goaltending coach from 2002 to 2010, working with everyone from Dan Cloutier to Roberto Luongo.
When Clark was let go in 2010, it worked out pretty well for the Canucks. Under new goaltending coach Rollie Melanson, Roberto Luongo had a .928 save percentage in the 2010-11 season — his best as a Canuck — and the team went to the 2011 Stanley Cup Final. The Canucks could only hope for something similar to happen this season.
If Clark does leave the Canucks, he leaves an excellent legacy behind him, as well as a string of goaltending prospects he had a hand in drafting.
