To be eligible for the Calder Trophy – the NHL’s ‘Rookie of the Year’ title – a player must enter the year with fewer than 25 games of NHL experience under their belt. That puts top Los Angeles Kings defenseman Brandt Clarke, who played nine games in 2022-23 and 16 games last year, narrowly outside of eligibility. Without the allure of a yearly title, attention has pulled away from Clarke, but his first full year in the NHL couldn’t be going better.
Only 19 players in the NHL are younger than the 21-year-old Clarke. That provides some framing for just how impressive his pursuit of the Kings’ top defense role has been. Clarke proudly leads Los Angeles defenders in scoring with 21 points in 37 games, five more than Vladislav Gavrikov in second. Even better, Clarke has been on the ice for 29 goals-for and 17 goals-against at even-strength, giving him a 63 percent GF% that leads the defense and ranks fifth on the Kings as a whole.
Clarke’s hot play is earning him quick recognition from new Kings coach Jim Hiller, who boosted Clarke into top-pair minutes in late November – though he eventually returned to the second pair after not maintaining his scoring. But Clarke has found a cushy role quarterbacking the team’s power-play, where he’s scored six points – matching the man-advantage scoring of Kings legend Anže Kopitar.
Clarke’s statistical success is great, but the timing of his step into a full-time role has been even better. The Kings have been without star right-defender Drew Doughty all season, as he nurses a broken left ankle that required surgery in October. In the wake of the injury, Los Angeles was forced to move left-shot Gavrikov to the right side, while Clarke and Jordan Spence vied for minutes behind him. But they’ve both matched the bill, proving they can stand up to meaningful minutes on a playoff-bound team.
Doughty has returned to skating drills, and could return to the lineup quickly in the new year. That should bring some sense of normalcy back to the Kings’ lineup, likely moving Gavrikov back to his natural left-side and bumping one of Joel Edmundson or Jacob Moverare out of the lineup. Doughty’s return will give Clarke more challenge for power-play minutes and offensive starts, but it will also give the Kings another capable scorer on the back-end. That could draw attention away from Clarke, and give him even more space to rack up dazzling scoring. Clarke is currently on pace for 47 points this year, which would sandwich him between Alexei Zhitnik (48) and Rob Blake (46) for the third-highest all-time from a rookie Kings defenseman. Both Zhitnik and Blake went on to have tremendous pro careers – and Clarke seems well within the realm of joining them, after stamping his spot at the top of Los Angeles’ lineup through the first half of the 2024-25 campaign.