The people who keep official NHL statistics at the Xcel Energy
Center can be pickier than an IRS auditor, so it's no surprise Wild
forward Cal Clutterbuck was credited with just two hits in his
team's victory over the Calgary Flames on Wednesday night.
Clutterbuck crunched Flames defenseman Dion Phaneuf during
his first shift of the game, pretty much setting the tone for a
game in which the Wild outhit the Flames 26-18, outshot them 35-26
and — no coincidence — outscored them 4-1.
"I was just looking to run him over, pretty much,"
Clutterbuck said after the game. "I think I rang his bell pretty
good; I think he said something to me, but I just laughed."
Ever the trash talker, Clutterbuck then chirped at Phaneuf,
who was denied a spot on the Canadian Olympic team this year,
asking him "how the Olympic break was going to go."
He confessed he pilfered that oral jab from teammate John
Scott. "I double-used it on him."
Two additional notable hits by Clutterbuck were penciled into
a reporter's notebook during the game, one against Flames
defenseman Cory Sarich two minutes into the second period behind
the Calgary net that drew a cheer from the sellout crowd at the X,
and one six minutes later when Clutterbuck chased down the Flames'
Adam Pardy and flattened him against the sidewall, eliciting
another big reaction from the spectators.
However the two hits were documented, they gave Clutterbuck a
league-leading 165, officially 10 more than anyone else going into
Thursday's games and on pace to lead the NHL in that category for
the second consecutive season.
His ability to nail opposing players with big body checks has
drawn considerable attention. Although hitting seems to come
naturally to Clutterbuck, who turned 22 in November, he actually
took lessons as a youth.
His father, Tim, traveling with the team during the
father/mentor trip to Chicago earlier this week, said Cal took to
checking from the first time he advanced to an age where it was
allowed, but because some players were bigger, the family had
concerns.
They sent him to a summer hitting camp in Port Colburn, near
Welland, Ontario, where the Clutterbucks lived, and it had nothing
to do with baseball.
"It was called 'Contact,' I think," Cal remembered. "I must
have been 11 or 12. I got some techniques from there, but. ... You
know, I was told one of those years to stop going against smaller
kids. They'd hold me back, only let me go against the real big
kids. I think I hit a couple of kids a little hard and they were a
little fragile.
"But it was just like half a day was skating and skills and
the other half was contact."
The main thing he learned, Clutterbuck recalled, was how to
take hits.
"Obviously, hitting is a lot of timing, so it's learning
angles and learning when to push. It's kind of an opposing force
kind of thing. If two guys are going right at each other, it's kind
of like a brick wall running into a brick wall. If a guy's already
going in a certain way, you want to try to guide him in the same
direction so you don't hurt yourself."
It wasn't a totally structured experience, Clutterbuck said,
"but that's where my foundation came from, I would say. That was
right around the time I think we had been playing contact for one
or two years, so I had a little bit of an idea how to do it.
"It was a lot of fun."
Having his father along on a brief road trip also was fun,
Cal said, because he could get a taste of life in the NHL.
"It's kind of hard to explain what you're doing," he said.
"You're on the road and you call them after a game or call them in
the afternoon and they wonder what you're doing. It's like, 'Well,
I do the same thing every day.' I think after this, having lived it
and been here and seeing what goes on, he's going to have a really
good understanding.
"I'm sure people are going to be asking him about it and
he'll be telling some stories for a while here. I'm glad he was
able to come and spend a few days with me."
His dad got to see both the Wild's 4-1 loss to the Blackhawks
in Chicago Tuesday night and their 4-1 victory over the Flames, in
which his son scored Minnesota's fourth goal and registered two
hits. Officially.
