Thursday, December 1, 2011

Zack Smith Archaeology


Dallas 3 Senators 2

Oh Nellie.

Out of sheer compassion for my readers, I won't bother to recap the Sens-Stars tilt tonight. Chances are you watched it. It was bad enough that the first two periods were unwatchable, even for Roger Neilson and Bobby Fischer acolytes, but when the third opened up, the Senators blew a late lead and left Dallas with zero points. Let's call it a filler game. You're gonna get a handful of these just to pad out the schedule, just like AC/DC would pad out albums with songs like "Mistress For Christmas" or "Got You By The Balls".

So instead....

Zack Smith has got me intrigued. Even being a fan of tough hockey players, I was somewhat sceptical about Smith until this season started but let's just say I've recently been converted. And in converted, I mean Bob Dylan in 1979 deciding that Like A Rolling Stone was meaningless and he was only going to write songs about Jesus. That kind of converted.

And it made me want to dig back a little and try to see what I missed when Smith was slugging it out in Swift Current and Binghamton.

And then I stumbled upon this video of a fight from Febuary 14, 2010 between Smith and Kenndal McArdle, then of the Rochester Americans and now a fellow NHL'er with the Winnipeg Jets. I don't think I could find a more perfect capture of what Zack Smith is all about. And I'm not trying to just glamorize a fight here. This goes beyond the actual fight.

Watch Smith get absolutely rocked by McArdle, collapse to the ice like anyone would, but then get right back up and just power a beating on McArdle to totally turn the tables and win the fight. No way he should have gotten up after that punch, but he did. That has nothing to do with how strong he is. That's pure character, competitiveness, "balls", whatever you want to call it. That was plain will.

I remember guys like Tim Murray just raving about this Zack Smith kid and looking at this video, I can understand why.



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