Approaching a career milestone Ryan Smyth still gives his heart & soul (plus a few teeth) to hockey.
We should have guessed what kind of player Ryan Smyth was destined to become when he chipped a tooth in his first National Hockey League game which, for the record, was played at the old L.A. Forum on Jan. 22, 1995.
He was still 18 and as Canadian as Kraft Dinner, that classic hockey mullet flowing out the back of an ultimately Canadian CCM helmet. Smyth was raised on that vintage Canadian style of game a guy learns playing in Moose Jaw, in a bastardized Saddledome-like arena known across the prairies as The Crushed Can.
Smyth's theory on the game? It's never been real complex.
"Well, the puck's got to get to the net, right? Maybe I'm a puck follower, but that's where it's got to end," he told me once, about a decade into a National Hockey League career that will reach game No. 1,000 Saturday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
- Of Smyth's 335 career goals, 85 came in the final five minutes
- Recorded 21 points in 36 games at the Saddledome
- Won a WJHC gold medal with Team Canada in 1995
- His nickname is "Captain Canada"
"I always took the puck to the net - even in junior. I took the puck to the net hard," he said Wednesday. "(As a rookie) I just said, 'I've got to emphasize this even more in the NHL.' The puck's going to go to the net and I'm going to be there. I'm going to be that guy who goes to the net."
If not for that style, Smyth never would have been drafted by the Edmonton Oilers in 1994, a year they had both the No. 4 and 6 overall picks. The Oilers were set on choosing a pretty boy named Jason Bonsignore with the fourth pick, and legend has it that an old Regina scout named Lorne Davis laid his job on the line with then-Oilers GM Glen Sather.
"He wanted someone with lots of guts, and Ryan Smyth will give you everything he thought the Oilers needed," said Darryl, son of dearly departed Lorne. "Lorne thought Bonsignore was too soft. Was he right?"
Years later his head coach, Ron Low, would say, "Smytty's been blood-and-guts for us for a long time."
Smyth's are, undoubtedly, 1,000 of the greasiest games played in the modern era, his 335 goals a collection of tip-ins, deflections, rebounds and passes banged in from well inside the leather.
His game was ground out in the toughest areas of the rink, the first decade in an era when the price of getting to those places was set higher than any point in hockey history.
"The rule changes have helped my game a lot," he says with some relief. "I remember guys like Derian Hatcher, Richard Matvichuk, Adam Foote... Year after year we'd play the Dallas Stars or the Colorado Avalanche, and it would be a grind playing against those D-men. With the rule changes, they've cracked down on the cross-checking stuff in front of the net.
"I hope to get a few more years. I feel good, feel healthy. I feel strong."
Through 15 NHL seasons - 10-plus in Edmonton - Smyth is a 50-point season you can take to the bank; that second-tier superstar whose intangibles stretch so much further than so many of the 80- and 90-point guys.
His shot was so modest that former coach Craig MacTavish once joked, "You can read Gary Bettman's signature as it goes into the net." And he finished every warmup of his career by rounding up a few pucks and tossing three into the stands for kids.
A trivia answer: As a kid he saw Nick Fotiu do in Calgary. "I said, 'If I make the NHL, I want to do that.' It was always three pucks, because the No. 3 is the number I wore as a kid. Three pucks, every warmup."
So he hit a kid in the head once, making him cry. "It didn't happen very often," Smyth, 34, says sheepishly. He gave the kid a stick, though in most NHL dressing rooms that would be thought of as stunting the young man's growth.
You see, Smyth has never taken to the new composites. He still uses the two-piece: a wooden blade inserted into a composite shaft, and nearly as straight as what Richard would have used.
"I always used a straight stick, even when I was a little kid. With the wide paddle, and I like a bottom-heavy stick," he says, well aware by now of what his bread and butter is. "I'm not recognized for my shot. I'm recognized as a guy who'll tip the puck, banging in goal-mouth passes."
And as a guy who can never get enough of the game. Thus, over the course of two Olympics and eight World Championships, our good colleague Pierre Lebrun slapped Smyth with the title, Captain Canada.
Smyth has captained six of those World Championships teams, where others choose to stay home and lick the wounds of a long NHL season. And he'll go again next spring, if his Kings somehow bow out early.
A Hair-trospective: Ryan Smyth's career in photos (may contain mullet) | View the Gallery
"It's an honour to play for your country, and you should be playing at that time of the year anyways," he reasons. "So your mind, your body is thinking, 'We need to be playing at this time.'"
Somehow a Banff kid who found as much inspiration from Kelly Buchberger as he did from his childhood hero who lined up beside him on his first NHL shift - Wayne Gretzky had been tossed out of the draw that night in L.A. - became one of the fine players of his era.
Watch: Hockeycentral Saturday at 6 p.m. ET for a special feature on Ryan Smyth and his extraordinary relationship with the fans in Edmonton | Check for times
So we'll close with the night that, to us, sums up his first 1,000 games best: It was a vital Game 3 of a playoff series that San Jose led 2-0, and Smyth swallowed a clearing pass by Chris Pronger, losing three teeth.
"Canadians understand the culture," we wrote the next day. "So we realize what it's worth when Smyth takes Chris Pronger's clearing blast flush in the mouth, then stays down for only as long as it takes to spit out a few chunks of tooth and a small pool of blood. And before the trainer can get to him, Smyth pops up and hustles off, eschewing any help.
"The crowd in Edmonton, they knew. And the ovation grew as the blood trail grew behind Smyth like bread crumbs in a fairy tale, to the Oilers bench and down the tunnel to the dressing room.
"The highlight package ended when Smyth - missing three teeth but richer by nine stitches - wrapped a puck around the San Jose net in triple OT, and the rebound went to Shawn Horcoff for a thrilling game-winner."
Said Smyth that day: "I'm not a guy who likes to lay on the ice. Doesn't make me any better than anyone else, but I'm just not a guy who likes to do that, that's all."
