The Ducks have signed prospect goalie Damian Clara to a three-year, entry-level contract, the team announced on Monday.
Clara, a 6-foot-6 leviathan who the Ducks selected in the second round of the 2023 NHL Draft (60th overall), climbed the draft board and has only seen his stock rise since last summer.
The 19-year-old was named the second-tier Swedish pro league Allsvenskan’s top junior player, an award known as the “Golden Grid,” which was captured previously by another Ducks netminding prospect, Calle Clang, as well as former Ducks center and 2023 Stanley Cup champion William Karlsson.
Clara, an Italian, was the first non-Swedish player to garner the honor. Should he reach the NHL level, he’d be just the third Italian-born player in league history, and the first one trained in Italy (most notable among his predecessors was former Ducks defenseman Luca Sbisa, who represented Switzerland internationally). In 2016, Clara took his talents to Austria and then spent the past two campaigns in Sweden.
In 2023-24, his miserly numbers went from a 2.23 goals-against average and a .913 save percentage in the regular season (25-8-0 record) to an even stingier 1.68 GAA and .931 saves mark in the postseason. There, he went 10-1-0 and won the Allsvenskan championship with Brynäs IF, the same club with which recently retired Jakob Silfverberg won a Swedish Hockey League (top division) title with in 2012.
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Clara was on loan from another Swedish club, Färjestad BK, for whom he will likely compete next season. It was in the top division (SHL) last season, and Brynäs’ title victory also led to its promotion to that level. Clara is not expected to join the San Diego Gulls of the American Hockey League just yet. The Ducks went from having an aging veteran and a player on an AHL-only contract to having as many as four other AHL-eligible goalies next season.
There’s little doubt about which country he’ll represent internationally, as Clara has been a young cornerstone of the Italian national program. Italy will host the 2026 Winter Olympic Games – it last hosted the event in 2006 when Sweden won gold in men’s hockey – and 1994 Stanley Cup winner Mike Keenan will coach “Forza Azzurri” on ice. Keenan told the Orange County Register last summer that he fully expected Clara, who became the youngest goalie to ever dress in the World Championships at age 16 back in 2021, to be part of the Olympic team.
