Chairman How's Glorious Army
Significantly Lowering the Bar Since 2008.

Last week, former Crunch Captain Dan Smith graciously allowed me to interview him over the phone for us here at CH. We really appreciate it, Smitty! He had a lot to say on his career, the fans here in Syracuse, the team, and what’s next. So grab a cup of joe/tea/vodka/brandy/etc. and come on in!

Did you always want to be a defenseman or did you start in another position?

I started as a forward, I was a centerman up until peewee, I think. And then in peewee no one wanted to play defense and I could skate backwards better than most, so I switched then. I’ve been a defenseman ever since. So, that would have been around grades 7 and 8.

Did you find you liked that better once you got used to it?

I don’t know, I was just glad to be playing so it didn’t really matter where I played.

Who were the players with the most influence on you when you were young?

My team was Edmonton, so…well, actually, I grew up closet to Calgary so I always got to experience those games and obviously Edmonton was their biggest rival so whenever they played the Oilers it was always a good game. But I always liked watching Gretzky and all the old school Oilers. Playing-wise, I don’t know if my dad counts but he was probably my biggest influence. He coached me up until I was 15 or 16, so I don’t know if he counts—probably everyone says that—but he was by far the biggest.

Would you say he was the person who really helped you develop your game the most?

I would say that he’s the person who taught me how to have fun. Basically his theory was as you’re growing up the only way you’re going to get better is to go out there. And you’re only going to go out there if you’re having fun, so he’d try to make practices so that you’d go out and have fun. You were working on stuff without even knowing it. That was kind of his philosophy which, you know, when you’re a little kid, if you’re doing fun stuff and working on stuff then that’s the best.

Did you find it was hard being married with a family while playing? There’s been a lot of talk of this lately, with some players getting engaged over Christmas and things going on in, um, other areas of sports.

It’s a transition. Like, I think there’s a difference between when you first get in the league and you’re trying to figure the league out and you’re twenty and whatever. You get to do the single guy thing, being in a new town and getting to be a hockey player, which is a life in its own. And then, I don’t know for me it just kind of progressed from that, when you then have a girl come and live with you. You know, I did that for awhile before I got married so actually having my wife come live with me wasn’t as big of a deal that first season. But you just have to adjust to everything. It’s just like everything else.

And then when you have kids I think the biggest thing is that…your whole schedule as a hockey player, you do—or I know I did—everything the same, like game days you have a schedule. You try to sleep the same, do everything the same, but with the kids it just doesn’t work out like that. It’s not that hockey is second, but you…you’re going to the rink a little more tired. It affects your routine. You don’t really have a routine anymore. You just gotta learn how to adjust and how to adapt to certain things and learn how to manage your time better cause you don’t have as much when you have a wife and then especially when you have kids.

What was your favorite memory from your time spent with Syracuse?

I thought our playoff run was cool, but that one kind of stinks because we should have gone a lot further than we did my first year there. To be honest, and it’s kinda gonna sound weird, but this past summer was kind of cool. The way I play, I don’t really…it’s not that I don’t like attention, but I just go out there and do my job. I don’t take praise, I don’t take anything, and then for the fans to respond the way they did during the summer…you know I was checking Lindsay’s blog, and for everyone to spend their time to try to get me back there…Honestly, I didn’t expect it, so if I’m going to remember anything it’s probably gonna be that and how the people there tried as hard as they could to get me back playing there. It was unbelievable. If I remember Syracuse for anything it’ll be that. It’s gonna be the last place I played so that’s kind of cool, too.

Is there a different memory for another point in time you’d like to share with us?

Each place as its own things that were good, things that were bad. I remember playing in Springfield, Massachusetts, which you know isn’t a big city but it was one of the more fun times we had just because of the team. The team really makes your year. I’ve been fortunate that I haven’t really played in Chicago or some of the nice big cities…everywhere I’ve played the team always made the year. Even the teams that haven’t been all that successful in winning championships, I’ve won one, but these teams have always been really fun, going to the rink, playing with the guys, stuff like that. So, a memory that stands out…not really, because each day something cool happens and then the next something cool happens.

Do you have any funny stories you could share with us? We heard one already of a certain player—Trevor Frischmon wouldn’t name him—getting left behind in an airport once. Is there another one like that lurking out there?

Yea, there’s a few. One of the ones…I was in Hamilton and as you know when you’re in the American league you have to fly a lot and when you fly you fly commercial and it kind of sucks, especially when compared to the NHL. When I was in Hamilton we were fortunate enough (that) we couldn’t get a commercial flight, I think we were flying to Cleveland and then Houston, so our owner chartered this plane…I can’t remember, I think it was a Coors Light plane or something a rock band would use, it was just a really sweet, cool plane.

So we got on and we land in Cleveland first, it was the first leg of this flight, and it was snowing and it was dark; we got in really late. For some reason the bus driver wanted to get a close as he could to the plane so we wouldn’t have to walk in the snow. We were all sitting there watching him come in and we just heard this big thud and the plane moved. He had driven the bus into the wing of the airplane! The wing was three or four rows deep in the front of the bus, he was lucky he didn’t chop his head off. It went in the passenger side of the bus but still, he was pretty lucky. But for the rest of the trip obviously we couldn’t fly, so we had to drive. I don’t know if that’s a funny story, but at the time…the more you play, you think you’ve seen everything, but then something else happens. I think that’s one of the cool things about the game.

Did you find being a captain in Syracuse was more challenging than on other teams? It seems to me that the guy wearing the C here takes on more of the pressure than perhaps those in other places.

Not really. I was the captain in a couple different places and for me I don’t think there was any added pressure. I think your role as a captain is to try to get more out of guys than they think they can give. If you get to the point where the guy doesn’t care, doesn’t want to try, then there’s nothing you can do, but I think my roll–how I approach the game in the locker room–didn’t really change. Even during the year prior, when I was only an assistant, I thought I had the respect of the team so if I wanted to say something, or if I thought the team needed to be addressed, or if there was an issue or something had come up, or whatever the room needed or a guy needed or the team needed, I felt comfortable saying it. When you’re the captain I don’t know if you’re expected to do that but I did it my whole career. Even during my first year I felt I worked hard enough and the guys respected me enough that when I did speak up guys would listen. I think because of that, when I became the captain of the team it wasn’t that big of a transition. It was just my roll the whole time.

Having the “C” on your shirt maybe gives you a little bit more power, or maybe it would force guys to have to listen to you, but it really doesn’t. Just because you have a letter on there, you still have to earn the guys’ respect. The way I played, hopefully I earned their respect enough to have them listen to me when I talked and I think I did that. If I was successful in doing that or not…I think I was. Some people might say maybe not, but those were the people who probably weren’t in the room.

With the teams I’ve been on, we worked hard. We may not have been the best teams but I think we got more out of our team than maybe if I wasn’t there.

How’s the rehab coming? Have things improved any?

No, I’m kinda stuck at a point here. I don’t know if you really know what happened, but I had a bursa sac removed and it was infected at the time, and now it’s kind of healed with a whole bunch of scar tissue around my kneecap that is pulling my kneecap in bad spots and it’s realigning the bottom half of my leg from the knee down. My leg isn’t even in the same spot it should be. I was just talking to my wife that it hurt today more than usual…I can’t really run on it and like, my kids are upstairs in the house we’re renting now and when I go get them in the mornings I really struggle to get up the stairs. It’s especially hard trying to carry them back downstairs. I can’t really go down stairs with them. I was hoping to get it to a point where I can do stuff like that, you know, every day stuff.

(Small warning here—it gets a little squeamish coming up)

Any time you cut in you get scar tissue, but mine was bad because there’s a point where the infection ate through the skin on the side of my knee. You could physically see all the way through the side of my knee to under my kneecap and a little bit on the top. So there was a huge void in my leg that shouldn’t have been there. It took probably a month and a half for that to heal and when it healed it just healed in a huge clump of hard scar tissue. I have the place where they cut and that obviously should have been the only place with any scar tissue but because of the infection ate away at part of the skin and all the stuff around the knee it’s causing a problem now.

For supposedly being a 2-3 week, back to 100% thing, it’s been nearly 5 months now and it’s just really frustrating. I have another appointment with the therapist tomorrow, we’re going to kind of evaluate where we’re at now. He was giving it 10-15 treatments of what he’s been doing to see how much it would get better, but it’s kind of stuck in a spot now where it’s improved but not enough. I think it’s to where they might have to go back in and kind of remove some of the scar tissue and then hopefully when it heals, because it’s not infected this time, it will heal how it should have. We’ll kind of battle that tomorrow, if you want to call back for an update you’re more than welcome to.

(I did, in fact, catch up with Smitty the next day, just to see what he found out. He said he’s going to go back towards the end of January to really discuss his options, but that the therapist was leaning towards surgery to clean it all out and hopefully be able to see what the problem really is. Our thoughts are with him and we hope he heals up soon!)

Has the Crunch indicated it might ask you back for the outdoor game in any capacity?

Not really, no, I talked to Jim a little bit about it, kind of told him when I retired that the one thing that sucked was not being able to play in that game. It seriously would have been so much fun to play in it or be a part of it. They haven’t really approached me for anything, I don’t really expect them to. I’m sure there’s a bunch more…I don’t want to say more decorated ex-Crunch players, but I’m sure they could find someone else that people would rather see be coming in there, to be honest with you.

I don’t know, I’ve read comments and things…I think people would be pretty positive about it. We’ll see what we can get done.

If it means I get to come watch the game I’m all for it! Like I said, just to be a part of it, as a player, coach, whatever…that doesn’t come around very often, especially in the minors, so that’s a pretty sick opportunity, not only for the players but for everyone around. I don’t know how if you’re even a partial hockey fan you wouldn’t want to go to that. I can’t see anything else that would come close to that. Even if it’s on the worse Syracuse day you could possibly imagine. I’d probably be wearing a ski suit or something. Actually, if someone wanted a good business venture they could show up to the game with 5-6,000 of those heated, padded seats they have and just sell them to people.

I heard you were considering coaching. I know the fans in Syracuse would love to have you come back in that capacity. Would coming back to Syracuse that way be something you’d like to do?

Yea, I’m actually looking into coaching a little bit where I am here in Iowa, they’re starting up a team here, so I’m hoping to get a break. It’s kind of weird because I played for so long and now I kinda gotta start over when it comes to coaching. I was one of the most experienced guys in the league when it came to playing and now I’m one of the least experienced when it comes to coaching. We’re kind of entertaining everything and I think I would be a good coach, whether my team would win or not…I would hope so! But that’s kinda what we’re looking at now. As far as coaching in Syracuse. yea, I mean, that’s a good spot. As long as you’re doing things to make a team improve, and you know everyone likes a winning team, so hopefully I’d have success there.

I know some of us are hoping for you and Karl (Goehring) as a tandem somehow.

Well, I actually talked to Karl just yesterday or the day before…he knows a guy that might be in charge here or something, I don’t really know, but that would be cool. He said that Columbus might not be there very long.

Yea, we’re not sure what’s going on. They’re bleeding money up there and Howard isn’t too happy and it’s just kind of a wait and see thing right now.

Yea, it kinda sucks because they’re having a bad year up there and you guys aren’t doing that well down there and it’s really tough all around, at least that’s what it sounds like from what they’re saying. When a front office is unstable that just usually doesn’t translate well to what’s going on the ice, either.

It’s so hard…it just…it seemed like last year the team would pull together for a run of games, but this year we’re lucky to get one game before things fall apart again.

It sounds like…we got into a little funk last year where we were playing well, but then one mistake and it would end up in our net. It sounds like that’s kind what’s going on this year but it’s every game. Someone lets in a bad goal or someone does something they shouldn’t do…the goalie comes out with a big save and then it goes off the rink or it does something else and then it ends up in their net. Once it’s in your head that things are going to go bad and then they go bad, it’s just tough to recover from that. You need a little bit of a luck to go your way and once things start to go your way you feed off of that, but it just doesn’t seem they can get on enough of a roll where they can get it turned around totally. Once you start fighting that and then guys start turning on each other it’s just really tough to get out of that.

Speaking of last year, how would you characterize your legacy, if you will, with the team? What kind of mark do you think you left? Are you satisfied with it?

It’s kind of tough because I wasn’t there for very long, but hoping when people associate my name—and I’ve tried to do this throughout my career—with just playing every shift as hard as you can and then just see where the chips lay. You just do as good as you can do and then you live with the results. I tried to play the game as hard as I could, as best as I could, and I think the people in Syracuse understood that more than anywhere and will respect me for that. If my name is associated with playing the game the best way, then that’s the best compliment I can get. 

Now I’m pretty biased, but I’d say he’s earned that compliment.

When I was going into this interview, MJ gave me some pretty valuable advice (I was tweaking out a just a bit from getting to do this). He said to me, “He may be your favorite guy ever to wear the sweater, but he’s still just a guy.” That turned out, of course, to be true. But what a very nice guy he is. I’d like to thank Dan for taking the time with me to do this interview. We really appreciate it and we wish him all the luck in the world at whatever path he decides to take. I look forward to watching Coach Smith behind the bench someday, whether here or elsewhere.