‘He loved the game’: Sask. hockey icon Melrose remembered by cousin, NHL great Clark

A day after his death at the age of 70, Saskatchewan’s Barry Melrose is being remembered as one of the most influential voices in hockey.

Melrose died on Wednesday after a three-year battle with Parkinson’s disease.

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Among those sharing their memories of the longtime NHL player, coach and broadcaster is Toronto Maple Leafs great Wendel Clark, who was a cousin of Melrose and grew up in the same small community of Kelvington, Sask.

“Barry was the first guy I saw leaving Kelvington ahead of me that I can remember,” Clark said. “He was somebody we looked up to, to strive to do what he did.”

While both went on to achieve national and international success in hockey, it was the early days together that Clark remembers the most, while Melrose, 11 years his senior, ran the local hockey school.

“We’d be driving by the Melrose farm where Barry lived,” Clark said. “We’d see him running the highway and the dedication he had to be the best player he could.”

Melrose is credited with helping to introduce the sport in the United States, both during his time as head coach of the Los Angeles Kings in the 1990s and his nearly three decades on ESPN as a hockey analyst.

According to Clark, Melrose’s warm personality fans saw during intermissions was exactly what he remembered from the summers spent with his older cousin.

“People got to see him on the air the way we would have seen him growing up, being the leader of our ball team,” Clark said.

Prior to his coaching career, Melrose played more than 300 games in the NHL, split between Toronto, the Winnipeg Jets and Detroit Red Wings, and another 183 games in the World Hockey Association.

It was during Melrose’s days in the ‘Motor City’ that Clark recalls a particularly heated game between the Red Wings and Maple Leafs.

“It might have been the three Kelvington guys involved in the last bench-clearing brawl in Toronto,” Clark said.

“I think Joey (Kocur) was the first guy off the bench. Barry and I collided behind the net in Toronto by the Zamboni entrance, we got taken to the penalty box. All heck broke loose and Barry and I spent the time talking in the penalty box about the mayhem that was going on.”

Melrose transitioned into coaching in the late 1980s and won a Western Hockey League championship with the Medicine Hat Tigers before stints with the Seattle Thunderbirds and the American Hockey League’s Adirondack Red Wings, where he won a Calder Cup championship in 1991.

He eventually cracked the NHL as a coach in 1992 with the Kings and spent three seasons on the bench in Los Angeles, which included a trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 1993.

In 1996, he was hired by ESPN as a studio analyst and became one of the network’s most relied-upon hockey voices.

Remembered for his flowing mullet and eye-popping suits, Clark said that style was only matched by his passion for the sport.

“He brought the casualness, he wore the fancy suits with the mullet and the great hockey language describing the game,” Clark said.

“He just loved the game and put it in his own words. Everybody loved to listen to him talk about it.”

Called the ‘voice of hockey in the United States’ by his ESPN colleague Steve Levy, Melrose helped introduce the sport to generations of hockey fans south of the border over his nearly 26 years with the network before he stepped away in 2023 following his diagnosis.

Clark believes Melrose’s relatability on-air came from his Saskatchewan upbringing and love of bringing new people into the sport.

“His, I want to say Kelvington-English, of talking about the game of hockey,” Clark said. “I think a lot of people related to it and had fun listening. You could just sense how much he liked the game and was a teacher of it for everybody that was watching it in the south.”

Both hailing from ‘Canada’s Hockey Factory’ in Kelvington, Clark added that Melrose always held his hometown and home province close.

“Barry was one of those products that I looked up to,” Clark said.

“I think everybody that’s from Saskatchewan is kind of the same. We’re all very proud to be from the province, the small town or the area we’re from. We’re not scared to tell people that we’re from here.”

Weyburn Red Wings remember Melrose

Among the tributes pouring in on social media, the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League’s Weyburn Red Wings posted about one of their most recognizable alumni on Thursday.

Melrose began his junior hockey career in Weyburn during the 1973-74 season, where he compiled 21 points and 162 penalty minutes in 50 games before joining the Kamloops Chiefs of the Western Canada Hockey League.

Red Wings president Patrick Grunert said Melrose’s legacy in the community is still remembered more than 50 years after his last SJHL season.

“Barry Melrose holds a special place in the history of the Weyburn Red Wings,” Grunert said.

“He isn’t just a former NHL player, coach, broadcaster, all those things. He is a Red Wing, he wore the jersey here. He played in this community and became a part of the history of the organization.”

Even though Melrose’s time in Weyburn was short compared to the rest of his playing career, Grunert added it was a starting point for one of the most influential lives in hockey.

It’s something he said both the team and the Saskatchewan junior hockey community take immense pride in.

“He went on to do some pretty remarkable things,” Grunert said. “He’s a great example of what junior hockey means not just to the Weyburn Red Wings, but to Saskatchewan.”