Smith inches closer to his NHL dreams
Published on September 6th, 2006
STONEHAM, MA - The one certainty that Stoneham native Kenny Smith has had during his professional hockey career is instability.
The 24-year-old Smith has cut ties with both the Portland Pirates of the AHL and the Edmonton Oilers of the NHL (the team that drafted him in third round (84th overall) of the 2001 NHL Draft and inked the Stoneham blueliner to a three-year deal that had come to a close at the end of last season), and will instead attend the September training camp with the AHL's Hartford Wolfpack - the American League farm team for the New York Rangers.
This will mark Smith's fourth straight season of pro hockey - a path that has never seen the former US Development Team member start and finish a season with the same team.
"It was a little disappointing when Edmonton decided to go in another direction, but they also have been without an ECHL and AHL team for the last few years and that always put me in kind of a strange place as a player...I think it's difficult for them to hold onto and develop players without having any farm teams, and I'm really excited about the opportunities in front of me," said Smith. "I know some of the players and the coaching staff in Hartford, and I'm pretty excited to potentially join up with them."
Smith played well into the spring with the AHL's Pirates last season where he participated in the AHL playoffs with former Boston College forward Ryan Shannon and current Anaheim Mighty Ducks forward and playoff force Dustin Penner - a stint that left him behind in his off-season workout program but also confident that the former Harvard Crimson skater could play, and play well, at the AHL level. Smith tallied eight assists in 48 games with the Pirates last season and picked up a goal and three assists in 13 games for the ECHL's Greenville Grrrowl last season - a solid showing in an offensively-tilted hockey league where defensive-minded and two-way defensemen can sometimes be overshadowed.
"Kenny is a real responsible two-way defender," said Derek Wilkinson, head coach and general manager of the ECHL's Charlotte Checkers after Smith agreed to terms with the club on Aug 23. "He adds a lot of experience and stability to our blueline."
Smith already has a contract set with the Charlotte Checkers of the ECHL if he doesn't make the Wolfpack line-up, but would obviously rather be plying his trade in the American Hockey League while sitting just one step away from his dream of playing in the NHL.
"I thought I played pretty well when I was given the chance during the playoffs last season, and that I've proven I can play at this level," said Smith. "When I had my exit interview with Portland last season, the one thing the coaching staff really impressed on me was to try to improve my hands and my feet.
"By improving my hands they meant making crisper passes coming out of the defensive zone and obviously my feet is my overall skating speed - both of which I worked on throughout the summer," added Smith, who spent the summer with his family in Stoneham while skating in the Hub City Hockey League out of Bridgewater - the same league that Dartmouth-bound Kevin McCarthy skated in this summer.
Smith agreed to terms with the Checkers
While Smith is eager for the hockey challenges awaiting the 6-foot-2, 209-pound defenseman in Hartford this month, Smith was also bittersweet about leaving an ideal situation he enjoyed last season skating with the Pirates and head coach Kevin Dineen - a well-respected ex-NHler who is among the rising stars clamoring for vacant head coaching jobs at the NHL level.
"Kevin Dineen is a guy that I really enjoyed playing for, and he's someone that honestly taught me so much about professional hockey," said Smith, of a man that played 1,180 NHL games mostly for the Hartford Whalers and Philadelphia Flyers during an impressive 20-year career. "There were a lot of guys that played in the NHL skating on that team last season, but he played for so long and in so many situations - he was able to really infuse everyone in the locker room with a great deal of confidence. He commanded so much respect from each and every player.
"Every time that he said something last year, it really just clicked in with me and has a positive affect on the way I was playing," said Smith. "Playing under him for a season is something I'll remember for a long, long time."
The affable Smith will hope to use all of the hockey sense he's accumulated this coming season to push closer to his lifelong dream: lacing up the skates in the NHL.
It's been a much-blessed puck career for Smith, who began playing youth hockey in Stoneham before becoming the youngest player to skate for the varsity in the Central Catholic League as a 13-year-old eighth-grader playing for Austin Prep in Reading.
Smith moved on to the prestigious and storied Catholic Memorial hockey program for two years - including a 24-0 sophomore season that saw the Scarlet Knights win the MIAA Super 8 Championship in 1997-1998.
Smith spent the following two seasons with the US National Development Team in Ann Arbor, Michigan and played for a handful of Select and National teams during his time with the national amateur team. Smith was named the "Best" defenseman and "Best Pro Prospect" during the Hockey Night in Boston
tournament in 1999, and then spent his next four seasons skating for the Crimson. While at Harvard, the defensive-minded blueliner scored 11 goals and totaled 30 assists in 119 games with the Crimson and was the 106th Captain in Harvard history during his senior campaign in 2003-2004.
After finishing up at Harvard, Smith played only five games for the Edmonton entry in the AHL during that 2003-2004 season and totaled three goals and six assists in 57 games for the Greenville Grrrowl of the very offensive-minded ECHL for the bulk of last season.
While Smith enjoyed his time with the Grrrowl, he noticed that being bumped up to the AHL, while a whole lot faster than any league he1d played in prior to this season, has helped him improve his game by leaps and bounds.
"When you1re playing around and with better players, it forces you to step up and improve your game and it actually gets a little easier if you1re doing your job. You see how good these players really are, and that's something that I feel like I've really done<caron> It's helped the development of
my game," said Smith. "There are guys here who have played in the NHL for an extended period of time, and I just try to watch them and pick up on a lot of the stuff that they do."
Moving up to the AHL last season has also allowed Smith to inch one step closer to his dream of skating in the NHL, a promotion that the Stoneham native now may be seeing as something closer to reality if combined with the
requisite amount of labor.
"It helps my confidence to know that I'm at this level and I1m doing okay, but I still have a long way to go," said Smith. "With every step, it gets a little more difficult to make, from<caron>college to the East Coast League was hard, and East Coast to [the AHL] was even harder. <caron>The next stop is going to be the hardest one of all of them."
It1s sometimes difficult to gauge the progress of a player like Smith, however, by just glancing at the numbers, as his size, strength and
defensive tenacity is the largest tools in his hockey arsenal of weapons.
To that end, Dineen has been impressed with his development this, but would
like Smith to throw his weight around more as he develops in a pro-style defenseman.
"He1s a kid that walked into our lineup and when he gets into the lineup he takes advantage of his opportunities," said Dineen. "He's a good safety
valve for us and he does a lot of the little things well. He's a physical presence and that's something that he's working on. <caron>I will say that he's a long way from where he was last year."
'There1s a large learning curve [for all players in the pros], but it's even doubly so for defenseman," added Dineen. "In the OHL and the junior leagues, there's a lot of hitting and fighting and there1s an NHL professional style of hockey. What we have going for us, is that he1s been able to learn from a lot of good defensemen at this level."
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