At a Dec. 13 induction ceremony at the Boston Westin Waterfront, local hockey legend Ben Smith joined the United States Hockey Hall of Fame, in an illustrious induction class that also featured Boston University coach Jack Parker (Somerville, Mass.), Providence College alum Ron Wilson (Riverside, R.I.), Clinton, Mass., native Scott Young and referee Kevin Collins (Springfield, Mass.)
A former player at Harvard, Smith (Gloucester, Mass.) spent five seasons as an assistant coach at Yale and nine with Parker at BU, then took over the Dartmouth and Northeastern programs. He also served as an assistant on the U.S. National Junior Team and Olympic staffs.
Smith served as head coach of the U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey Team in 1998, 2002 and 2006, leading Team USA to the first-ever gold medal in women’s hockey at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.
Smith chatted with New England Hockey Journal at the induction ceremony. Here are some of the highlights of that conversation.
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New England Hockey Journal: How exciting is it being named to the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame?
Ben Smith: First of all, it’s an unexpected appointment. To be with Jack, to be with Scott, knowing Ron as long as I have, and now having met Kevin, it’s just a great ‘Hockey Night in Boston’ type of thing, it seems. It’s just like home.
It’s not something you even dream about as a kid. You grow up thinking you’re going to play in the NFL or pro hockey or baseball, but you never think about being selected for something like this. When the call came, it was really exciting.
NEHJ: What makes this induction so special for you?
Smith: Because it is here, because it is home, because it is U.S., because it is Jack and Scott. I’ve been at it a while, so it’s really just a great, great honor and I’m really excited about it.
NEHJ: What led to your decision to become a coach?
Smith: In the seventh or eighth grade, I had to write a career term paper. I remember I took a book out of the library by a Yale football coach by the name of Gib Holgate, then I read the book on hockey by Eddie Jeremiah, the famous Dartmouth coach who coached the 1964 men’s Olympic team, so from an early age I was always interested in becoming a coach.
Working with great athletes has obviously been a tremendous, rewarding experience. Whether it’s male or female, I know I’ve been around some of the great athletes in this sport over the last 30 to 40 years, and some of the best coaches, too. It’s really been a wonderful opportunity.
Right from the get-go, I see it as a family endeavor. Moms and dads are so important. The equipment, first of all, has to be provided by somebody, so mom and dad get invested. Whether it’s Suzie or Sam that goes to the rink that’s not going to play, they’re looking over the boards and he or she wants to play. It keeps the families in a weekend pattern. The parents meet other parents, kids meet kids. I think it’s just a really great sport, a really great bonding experience for people across the whole hockey board.
When you look at the list of former inductee, the brothers going back 60, 70, 80 years — the Riley brothers, the Cleary brothers, the Christian brothers, and more recently, the Fusco brothers and the Hatcher brothers — it’s a real brother and family event. And now, you get into situations where you’ve got Tony Granato and Cammi Granato and you’ve got Krissy Wendell and her brother who was the captain at the University of Minnesota, Tara Mounsey and her brother, Nick, who played at UNH. Again, it’s a great family.
NEHJ: What influence did Jack Parker have on your coaching career?
Smith: I went down to Yale with (Tim Taylor) and spent five years with him and then nine years with Jack. I’ve always said that I felt like I got a master’s at Yale and a doctorate at BU, and along the way just developed two friendships that were spectacular and lifelong. Obviously, we’ve lost Tim, but Jack and I have become just great friends. We go back to 1960, I think, when we started playing against each other; he was at Malden Catholic and I was at Gloucester High, then in college. I coached against him, and finally, I was sick of losing to him, so I got on board. When I got on board, it was really like a family situation where I got to meet his daughters and his mother, and he got to meet my family. In fact, he and Tim were pallbearers at my dad’s funeral, so it runs pretty deep.
NEHJ: What made Jack so special?
Smith: I’ve told people before — and I get a little embarrassed about saying it because I don’t want to insult other coaches — but not only does he have the technical knowledge and not only did he have the ability to identify players and situations, I thought that maybe along with Ron Mason, his in-game adjustments were really interesting to watch. You’d spend all week preparing for a team, you’d come out and instead of going against a 1-2-2, it’s all of a sudden a 2-3 or something like that; he’d just pick it up. The other thing is that I believe he willed his teams to victory at times with his competitive nature, and just his ability to radiate that positive energy was palpable.
NEHJ: How has the talented group of young players in the NHL impacted the game for the better?
Smith: One of the the things I’ve been doing for the last six or eight years is (scouting) with the world junior teams. (It’ great) to see not only how our level has risen, but to see what the geographical distribution is. When Jack and I were growing up playing, you almost needed climate to be a key factor. To me, the key factors now other than abilities are population density and economic growth. Along with that, you’ve got the spread of the NHL in, what people have called for a while, "non-traditional" markets. I don’t think they can say that for too much longer because there are kids coming out of Florida, Texas and California, so that’s the biggest thing that I’ve seen is just the width and breadth of hockey in America, and I think USA Hockey is kind of riding that wave.
Part of that is the attraction for kids. You’re not going to have a good player unless you have a good athlete, and we’re obviously getting great athletes. That was kind of the tip of the ’96 team and to see those guys and how they projected into what they had for the sport. Guys like Brian Leetch, who was a great baseball player, the Chris Drurys of the world. Now you’ve got people saying (Auston) Matthews was a heck of a baseball player. Kids coming from athletic backgrounds are really helping our sport.
NEHJ: What has the Olympic scouting process been like?
Smith: It’s been a little bit like a Popsicle headache. I’d go to games and sometimes would forget which team we’re looking at. Most of my workload has been done with the boys Under-20 team for the last six or eight years, but now we interjected the Olympic team. At college games, I’m watching some of the world junior kids and some of the older kids who aren’t eligible for the world junior team but are eligible for the Olympics playing against each other. Then, we went to Europe to watch some of the guys play in a tournament there for a week, and we’re calling through the American Hockey League. It’s been a very busy, busy fall.
NEHJ: Although the ultimate goal is to have the NHL players involved, thinking about this team must be exciting, right?
Smith: It is an exciting situation. The only thing that’s a little nerve-racking is that we’re not going to get a chance to prepare too well. Coach Granato, they’re going to have three days of practice. A lot of other countries are going to be facing a similar situation, but not quite as severe as ours.
NEHJ: Having coached the U.S. Women’s Olympic Team in 1998, you’ve seen that sport’s growth since its international inception. How special has that been?
Smith: I think that group that won the gold medal in 1998 kind of set off a chain reaction. Up until that time, people would say, "What do you do, Ben?" "Well, I coach the women’s Olympic team." "In what sport?" "Well, in ice hockey." "Oh, women play hockey?" At that time, in the late ’90s, there were only 10 or 11 what you’d call Division 1 college programs. After the ’98 Olympics, there was just a tremendous growth of leagues with the WCHA and CHA, so now they’re close to 35 Division 1 programs with most of them being scholarship situations. Those are great opportunities, and I think parents can understand. I think it’s moving in a great path; sometimes a little bit better than the men because the men have such a dual track with college and professional, and where do they get off that track. The girls seem to be there for the reason and the season. It’s interesting to see how it’s grown.
One of the things that happened off that ’98 team was the explosion of people playing. It’s a little bit like Branch Rickey and the Dodgers. If you keep signing players, you’re going to get some quality out of quantity. That’s what we’ve done. When I first started, there were 6,000 registered players in the U.S., and now there’s close to 75,000.
NEHJ: What were the major differences in coaching that group?
Smith: There were great athletes, so I just walked in at the right time. I don’t remember anything different from my approach to coaching a hockey team with those athletes. Some of the teddy bears on the bus and stuff like that, but that didn’t bother me. The one thing I often told to a lot of my former colleagues is that I found out I had to be a little more careful because women would listen to what you say. You could walk into a guys’ locker room and get on the board, "Do this and do that, do this and do that," and they’d go, "Ah, screw him," you know? If you told those players to do something, they’d do it. That was one of the exciting things. They were intelligent athletes, and they got together on the same page and became a pretty forceful team.
NEHJ: How special was ending that whole process with a gold medal?
Smith: It’s been a long time. I’ll go for periods of … a long time without anybody asking that question. I’ve found that in the last few months because of this award, people have been asking that question, so I’ve been reliving some of those moments in my own mind. All of a sudden, I can start to feel the hair on the back of my neck and realize that it was something really special. One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately — I guess because I was young, or younger — was when we won the gold medal in 1960 in Squaw Valley. It seemed like it was 100 years before we won again in Lake Placid, but it was only 20. We won in 1998, and here we are 20 years later. I’m revved up. I think we can do it, so I’m excited to hopefully get that synergy. I’m getting a little excited standing here just thinking what those kids are going to be up to. I’m going to be over in Korea with the men’s team, but I’ll be keeping an eye on how that (women’s) team’s doing, too.
NEHJ: What is the most vivid memory of that Olympic experience?
Smith: When you remember back to those days, you see the camaraderie of the players and their sponge-like curiosity and desire to become real strong players. And, they did it together. The unselfishness was awfully impressive.
NEHJ: What are you looking for in building this men’s Olympic roster?
Smith: We don’t need a good goalie, we need a goalie to be good. That’s obviously the starting point. I think we’re looking at experience on defense and experience in international-type play because of the big ice surface. I think we’re going to start from the goal out like most teams usually do. That’s going to be our charge. I think we could have a pretty quick team up front, but right now our height requirements haven’t been … in Germany one night, we had nine forwards under 5-foot-9. I think we’re going to have a team that can skate, and that’s what we’re looking for.
NEHJ: How have USA Hockey coaching and rules changes impacted the game and more people getting involved at a younger age?
Smith: All the instruction and all of the coaching that’s going on in USA Hockey at all levels, all grassroots levels, is just rising all the time. The 2016 draft with five St. Louis kids in the first round, you see pockets like that. I’m pretty sure that Al MacInnis, Keith Tkachuk, Jeff Brown and some of those former St. Louis Blues players who have stayed in those areas — and that’s happening in all the NHL areas — they get involved in the youth programs because they’ve got kids. That’s part of what’s going on in the grassroots part of USA Hockey; coaching education has gotten so much better. We’re always going to be entrusting coaching to parents, but now parents can go online and have a practice set up for them out of a USA coaching manual. Things like that are really starting to pay dividends.
NEHJ: Touch on the difficulties collegiate coaches are facing with players leaving early and more NHL control over players these days.
Smith: What you see is that the game is a business through a lot of different levels. Age levels can back you right down to 14 or 15, so the challenge that college coaches have are much different than when I was coaching. I think they have a real hard job.
NEHJ: Where do you see USA Hockey going in the future?
Smith: With the numbers and the participation and the coaching at the lower levels, I think we’re going in an upward direction. I think the rest of the world is taking a look, and they’re kind of frightened about what we’re building here, so it’s fun to see it.
