Richard Clune

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Richard Clune (born: April 25, 1987 in Toronto, Ontario) is a major junior ice hockey left winger who currently plays for the Ontario Hockey League's Barrie Colts.

Clune played minor midgets for the Toronto Marlboros, a team that later produced the talents of OHL superstar John Tavares, the goal-scoring phenom from the Oshawa Generals. After scoring 23 goals and 55 points, as well as racking up 128 penalty minutes, in 27 games in 2002/03, Clune was drafted in the second round of the 2003 OHL Priority Selection (29th overall) by the Sarnia Sting. Two of Clune's best friends were also drafted to the OHL in 2003; defenceman Matt Pelech, then of the Vaughan Kings, was also drafted in the second round (38th overall) by Sarnia and Clune's minor midget teammate Michael Duco was drafted in the fifth round (89th overall) by the Kitchener Rangers, who were -- at the time -- the defending Memorial Cup champions.

During the 2003/04 season, his first year with Sarnia, Clune had a decent rookie year with three goals and 16 points, as well as 72 penalty minutes, in 58 games. In 2004/05, his second season with the Sting, Clune finished the season with 21 goals and 34 points in 68 games. That season was also the one that cemented him as a bit of a troublemaker. While strongly lauded as a highly-skilled defensive forward, Clune became one of the hardest players in the OHL to play against due to his abrasive play. He finished the season with 103 penalty minutes, fourth most on the team.

After the 2004/05 season, Clune made Sarnia Sting franchise history when he won the Bobby Smith Trophy, emblematic of the OHL's scholastic player of the year. The graduate of Sarnia's Northern Collegiate Institute became the first Sting player to ever win the award. After a solid season, Clune was drafted in the third round (71st overall) by the Dallas Stars at the 2005 NHL Entry Draft on July 30, 2005, despite not playing at the 2005 CHL Top Prospects Game in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was not the first in his family to go through a hockey entry draft that year; in May of 2005, his then 16-year-old brother Matthew, a defenceman for the Toronto Young Nationals Minor Midgets, was drafted in the 15th round (299th overall) of the 2005 OHL Priority Selection by the Owen Sound Attack.

In August of 2005, Clune represented Canada at the World Under-18s in the Czech Republic, winning gold over the host team. Sumperk native Tomáš Pospíšil, the only Czech player to score a goal in the gold-medal game, later joined Clune in Sarnia after the Sting drafted him in the first round of the 2005 CHL Import Draft, shortly before Pospíšil was drafted in the fifth round of the 2005 NHL Entry Draft (135th overall) by the Atlanta Thrashers.

For the 2005/06 season, Sarnia's then-head coach Shawn Camp named Clune one of the Sting's four co-captains. The others were Matt Pelech -- who was drafted in the first round of the 2005 NHL Entry Draft (26th overall) by the Calgary Flames, 2004 Atlanta Thrashers fourth-rounder (106th overall) Chad Painchaud and overage defenceman Jamie Fraser. Clune was not happy in Sarnia, though. The team had not made the post-season since his rookie year in 2003/04 when the West Division-leading Sting were defeated in five games by the seventh-seeded Erie Otters in the first round of the playoffs; Clune registered only one assist in that playoff series. Things were about to get much worse.

In time, Clune became really lonely in Sarnia. At the 2006 trade deadline, his good friend Matt Pelech was traded to the London Knights for defenceman Matt McCready. As well, fourth-year Sting player Micheal Haley, who had been with Sarnia since Clune was a rookie, was traded to the Toronto St. Michael's Majors. Clune found himself at constant odds with new Sting general manager Alan Millar who had replaced Terry Doran, the general manager who had drafted him to Sarnia. Their relationship was worsening by the minute.

Despite his solid season with 20 goals, 52 points and 126 penalty minutes in 61 games in 2005/06, Sarnia finished last in the OHL standings and Clune wanted out as soon as possible. The previous season, they had finished second from last. Before leaving for his second NHL training camp with Dallas, Clune approached Millar and demanded that he trade him out of Sarnia; not only would it alleviate the tension that he felt with Millar but it would also help his prospective professional hockey career.

Clune would later get his wish.

During the offseason, Clune was traded to the Eastern Conference juggernaut Barrie Colts in exchange for third-year centre Mike Roelofsen and three draft picks. Clune found himself in élite company. Barrie's second-year captain was 19-year-old OHL superstar Bryan Little, who had been drafted in the first round of the 2006 NHL Entry Draft (12th overall) by the Atlanta Thrashers after a 42-goal, 109-point season in 2005/06. In Barrie, there were many other skilled players besides Little, including forwards Hunter Tremblay and Vladimir Nikiforov, defencemen Andrew Marshall and Nicolas Plastino, and sophomore goaltender Andrew Perugini, who had a solid rookie season in 2005/06 backing up All-Star goalie Dan LaCosta.

For the first half of the season, Barrie head coach Marty Williamson placed Clune on the Colts' top line with captain Little and fifth-year winger Tremblay with respectable chemistry. This was evident early on; Clune scored two goals in his first game with Barrie on September 21, 2006, against St. Michael's. Later on during the season, Williamson placed Clune on the left wing of the team's second line with sophomore diminutive sparkplug Nikiforov on the right wing and centered by towering Slovakian rookie import Tomáš Marčínko, who was drafted in the fourth round of the 2006 NHL Entry Draft (115th overall) by the New York Islanders. The 5'11" Clune found instant chemistry with the 5'7" Nikiforov and the 6'4" Marčínko who were both really fast skaters, much like he was. While the line of Little, Tremblay and sophomore Kris Sparre became the Colts' offensive powerhouse, Clune's line definitely became the Colts' energy line with their blistering speed and offensive upside.

In October, the Colts honoured Clune with their team's monthly sportsmanship award. One incident in late October, however, showed anything but sportsmanship. On October 28, 2006, during a game against London, Clune scored an empty-net goal to secure a 4-2 victory for Barrie. He then proceeded to get down and did pushups on the ice, something identical to what his favourite NHL player, New York Rangers winger Sean Avery did with the Los Angeles Kings in a game against the Nashville Predators only a season before.

Clune's tense relationship with Alan Millar took another bad turn on November 23, 2006. Millar was appointed the general manager of the OHL's representative team for the 2006 ADT Canada-Russia Challenge Series, a six-games-in-six-days affair in which the best Canadian players from each of the three subsidiary leagues of the Canadian Hockey League (Ontario Hockey League, Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and Western Hockey League) play two games against a select squad of Russian junior players who would later participate in the upcoming World Junior Ice Hockey Championships. Clune took part in the event almost one year ago to that day in a game in Kitchener while with the Sting on November 24, 2005; on November 23, 2006, however, Millar did not choose Clune to take part in the first game of the OHL series, which was held in Sarnia. It only added to the heated rivalry that Millar had with the player who was once his best defensive forward.

A week after that game, on November 30, 2006, the Sarnia Sting made their only trip to the Barrie Molson Centre to play against the Colts. Clune registered one goal against his former team. Almost two weeks later, on December 8, the Colts travelled to the Sarnia Sports and Entertainment Centre to take on the Sting. It was Clune's first game back in Sarnia since he was traded. In that game, Clune was booed by the Sting faithful each time he touched the puck and he was especially booed when he scored a goal during that game.

By the end of the 2006/07 season, Clune had his best season offensively. He finished with a career-high 32 goals and 46 assists for a career-best 78 points in 68 games played. He finished 32nd in the entire OHL in scoring. He also finished with a career-high 151 penalty minutes, good enough for nineteenth in the entire OHL in that category.

Most importantly, Clune had the chance to finally enjoy something that had eluded him since he was a rookie: the playoffs. Providing the fact that Barrie was the top team in the Central Division, and they also had more season points than the East Division-leading Belleville Bulls, the Colts comfortably clinched the Eastern Conference with 97 points (48-19-0-1), making them the top seed in the conference.

The Dallas Stars, led by general manager Doug Armstrong, strongly considered Clune to be one of the team's top Canadian Hockey League prospects, as well as the QMJHL's Rouyn-Noranda Huskies' Russian import defenceman Ivan Vishnevskiy (their 2006 first-round pick, 27th overall) and the recently signed James Neal (their 2005 second-round pick, 33rd overall), a crash-and-bang winger from the OHL's Plymouth Whalers. The Stars hope that Clune will be a player much like Brenden Morrow, the team's current captain, a player who can be an agitator, who can put up big numbers and who can be a great leader on and off the ice. They also hope for traces of Jere Lehtinen in Clune, a player who has won the Frank J. Selke Trophy three times during his NHL career for being the league's best defensive forward.

On March 25, 2007, exactly one month before his 20th birthday, Clune was signed to a standard three-year entry level contract with Dallas.