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“He was always very skilled guy with a lot of heart and passion for this game,” Dean MacArthur said. “If you don’t have those two things, the passion and the drive, you’ll never make it. It doesn’t matter how good you are. There’s lots of guys with better skills than him who were first-round picks that don’t finish the journey because they don’t have that real passion for the game.

“If you’re not willing to give up everything to play the game and take some risks and some chances, you’ll never accomplish what you want. You’ll get sidetracked. It’s been a journey and it’s been tough on Jessica and his kids — the not knowing — but I think he’s fine, I really do as far as his physical well-being.”

Just before Clarke returned to the Senators’ lineup for the first time since Oct. 14, 2015, for an April 4 home game against the Detroit Red Wings, he called his parents at 4 p.m. ET to let them know he’d been told to come to the rink to take part in the warmup, and suddenly there he was back on the ice.

“When they interviewed him on TV on the first night, after the first game, oh God, Deb and I were in tears,” Dean said. “Not only would he come back, but can he survive? Those were always questions in our own mind. We never doubted him for a minute.”

Of course, the MacArthurs questioned, just like everybody else did, whether their son would ever get another chance to pull on that No. 16 Senators jersey again.

“We wondered in January after the baseline test,” Dean said. “We thought, you know what, maybe this is going to be over and maybe this journey is done now and we’ll turn to the next chapter.