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As with most dependable employees, Mike Smith has a penchant for punching the clock come hell or high water.
No sick days for this likeable lad of 27 summers who was taught long ago to render 100 cents on the dollar when it comes to honest effort. He's nothing if not conscientious. He shows up on time and ready to go, whether the task be pulling weeds in mom’s garden or netminding for the Tampa Bay Lightning, one of 30 shinny companies populating an overpopulated National Hockey League.
In other words, unless he's on a hospital gurney en route to surgery, selfless Smitty will punch in ... even when he shouldn’t.
For instance, he now acknowledges, with the benefit of hindsight, that maybe he shouldn’t have reported for duty the day after taking a teammate’s errant knee to the back of the head in a game against the Philadelphia Flyers early last December.
“That one wrung my bell," the Verona native remarked, recalling the violent knee-on-coconut collision involving Lightning forward Vinny Prospal, “but I didn’t think too much about it.”
Smith realizes, too, that perhaps it might have been wiser to at least book off the rest of that numbing night shift in Philly. He didn’t, of course. He finished the game and continued to clock in at work for another two months, all the while saying nada to practically no one.
Only now he soldiered on with demons, unwanted company in the guise of "little black dots" that flashed dangerously in his field of vision, usually after quick side-to-side turns of his head. If a shot followed a split-second later — and last season one or six often did — Smith did his best.
“Only thing I could do is try and pick out the right little black dot,” he said, half-joking.
He also began feeling exhausted for no apparent reason, a perplexing dilemma for a fit 220-pound athlete.
Six weeks after the previously-noted collision during a game in Buffalo, a blind-side wallop delivered inadvertently by, of all people, a referee marked the beginning of the end of the goalie's 2008-09 campaign. Not only were the dots dancing nightly, Smith was now irritated by bright lights and loud sounds, the kind inherent to big-league arenas.
He played two more games before reluctantly confessing his health woes to a startled head coach Rick Tocchet. His last game was Jan. 30.
Smith hasn’t been on skates since. for his is indeed a slow, now steady, but unfailingly cautious comeback from a concussion.
“Those last two games were probably my two worst in the NHL,” Smith reflected during an interview at his expansive waterfront property on Howes Lake, minutes from nowhere in a picturesque part of his beloved north country.
“The biggest reason why I kept playing was because the team was only eight or 10 points out at Christmas. We still had a shot at a playoff spot.”
He now understands that he likely shouldn’t have been anywhere near a net, let alone in one, in a most vulnerable position.
“Turning my head, it was like my vision was a half-second behind,” he explained, easing his six-foot-four frame into the tan leather coach inside the cozy loft constructed over top the garage. The main house is a 2010 project.
“I’ve never experienced anything like it, I couldn’t pick up the puck,” Smith added. “Put it this way: For an NHL goalie to be seeing little black spots, it’s not good.”
At his off-season home in Minnesota, Bolts forward Ryan Malone, the Verona puck-stopper’s pal, inferred Smitty had it wrong.
“We kept telling him the black dots were really the 55 shots he was seeing every game,” he said.
Tampa Bay trainer Tom Mulligan, in a lighter moment with the black dot situation, suggested the goalie “stop the one in the middle.”
Smith’s recovery, almost non-existent at the outset, picked up steam considerably.
“The first couple of months there was no progress to speak of,” noted Mulligan over the phone from Florida. “Mike had to pretty much shut everything down.
“Around the middle of April, he turned the corner and really started going forward in his workouts.”
Mulligan said Smith now pushes his beats-per-minute heart rate to 175, roughly his maximum training capacity. The key: No after-effects.
“He’s able to fully train with no symptoms,” Mulligan added. “The only thing he hasn’t done is go on the ice and face shots.”
That moment’s approaching fast. Sometime in the next fortnight, Smith will don flat blades for the first time in nearly seven months — and just weeks away from scheduled participation in a conditioning camp at Tampa Bay.
“That’s a huge step,” said Malone, who recounted the frightening story of Duvie Westcott, the twice-concussed, ex-Columbus Blue Jacket who suffered through periods where he sought relief in bed in a dark room. With his eyes closed. For hours at a time, any time of day.
“Duvie’s still playing and Mike will be back, too,” Malone said supportively. “Getting out there and stopping some pucks is huge, because he’ll get tested with all kinds of shots — one-timers from different angles, plays that force him to make quick moves and, yeah, eventually he’s going to get dinged in the head.
“That’ll be another test.”
Though Malone’s decision to leave Pittsburgh following the 2007-08 campaign cost him a Stanley Cup, he doesn’t regret coming to Tampa and, in fact cites “new-age goalie” Smith as part of the reason.
“I was still with Pittsburgh and the first time we played Tampa we were all over them with 40-some shots and Smitty was unbelievable,” said Malone, who at the time never had met the goalie.
“When I became a free agent, one of the things I told my agent was to look for a team with a young, new-age goalie. Like the kid in Tampa. Having someone back there who knows how to handle the puck, it’s like having an extra defenceman out there.”
Smith, upbeat to a fault, raves enthusiastically about the coming season and the hunt for a strangely-elusive playoff berth.
“I was telling my dad how the average size of our defence shot up to six-foot-four, with a couple of six-six monsters in (Kurtis) Foster and (Victor) Hedman,” said the prime beneficiary of a beefed-up blueline brigade. “Now we have that big, tough defence that we lacked last year. Give credit to management, they assessed what was needed and got it done. We didn’t need scoring. We have scoring, we have firepower, but last year the forwards spent too much time in our end because the defence couldn’t get them the puck.”
Encouragement also is found in the addition of free-agent Swedish defenceman Mattias Ohlund, a seasoned NHL rearguard who is expected to mentor the touted Hedman, Tampa Bay’s top pick (second overall) in the recent entry draft.
“Those two together, they give us a great 1-2 Swedish punch,” Smith said.
Smith shows a visitor around his “taste of paradise.” His property encompasses 52 wooded acres and 1,000 feet of pristine shoreline. An open-beam design inside the garage/loft features hand-hewn beams that Smith salvaged from a century-old barn.
The elevated loft contains a mini gym complete with a full set of dumbbells, two universal machines, rubberized flooring and a spectacular panoramic view of the lake some 50 feet below.
As befitting someone with a seven-figure stipend — two years and $4.4 million US left on his contract — Smith permits himself a few luxuries. The glimmering beet-red Ford pick-up is company for the Florida-plated Cadillac Escalade parked in his parent’s driveway and two pleasure craft, including a sleek 21-foot Ranger with a 225-hp Evinrude bolted to the stern.
To one side of the garage is a golf net with a large target hanging in the middle and a couple of dozen balls beneath it: Proof the owner’s been honing his game — and for good reason.
A week after returning from Colorado and recently-released Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Brian Griese’s tournament, Smith has his own golf gig on the horizon. As expected, Thursday’s third running of the Mike Smith Charity Golf Tournament at Rivendell Golf Club is sold out. The field of 144 excludes a host of hopefuls on a waiting list.
As in the past, the tournament, fuelled by a score of corporate sponsors, benefits the North Frontenac Community Arena in Piccadilly, the tin-walled winter playground where Ron and Ingrid’s boy first faced vulcanized rubber.
“It’s where I made my first saves,” Smith recalled, “and where I strapped on my first pads, a pair of brown Coopers that probably weighed as much as all my equipment combined today.”
To date, the event has contributed some $40,000 toward arena renovations as well as North Frontenac minor hockey.
“We have unbelievable people involved,” Smith said, deflecting praise.
Organizer Terry Gibson isn’t surprised the tournament has been a hit from the get-go.
“You’ve got Smitty, for starters, a popular hometown boy who has given a lot back to the community, and then you have the arena, which everyone around here can relate through maybe hockey or a wedding reception or a dance. It’s a good combination.”
Back in paradise, Smith’s thoughts return to his own return, to his livelihood and the resumption of a NHL career entering its fifth season.
“I’m about 85% now,” he said. “I’m not there yet, but I’m close. I’ll be ready.”