Chris Smith
SHS Class of 1979
As a kid, Chris Smith grew up playing street hockey in the Minot neighborhood of Scituate. As an adult twenty years later, he excelled as a professional playing ice hockey in Europe. Along the way, he’s produced a canvas of memories through his varied experiences playing pond hockey, youth hockey, high school hockey, junior hockey, college hockey, and professional hockey. There have been multiple setbacks and triumphs along the way, but Chris Smith has lived a remarkable hockey life that anyone growing up playing the sport in Scituate will envy. If you don’t know him, you’re about to.
Chris Smith is a bit of a hockey enigma. Everyone in Scituate who played hockey in 1970s has at least heard of him. How the puck seemed to stick to his blade. How he would toe-drag pucks when he was thirteen. How the puck always seemed to find the exact spot in the back of the net where he figured it belonged. The Smiths were well-known in Minot. Chris grew up with two sisters and three older brothers on Whitcomb Road. His father, Hampton Smith, a stockbroker in Boston, played hockey at Colgate University and passed the love of the game to his sons, especially Chris.
Chris Smith: “Hockey was huge in Minot. David Silk, the Olympic gold medal winner, grew up here. The Coadys, especially Sean, were an enormous presence in the neighborhood. He played hockey and was an absolute force in Minot. Sean had a big influence on me. He had several brothers – Dennis, Greg, Peter, Franny – to name a few. Peter Coady is my brother-in-law. And they were all tough. I mean tough. The Coady clan was not to be messed with.
“My neighborhood was all about hockey when I was a kid. We played street hockey all the time. We played until it got dark and our mothers called us home for dinner. Street hockey was how I learned puck control. The tennis balls we played with were lively and not easy to control. Eventually I got better at it and it helped me a lot when I began playing ice hockey.
“Minot was a very competitive area to grow up in, and really the best place in the world if you played sports. I remember there was a rink at the Fields' home in the neighborhood. It eventually become our rink. We set it up in our front yard. We had a rubber puck. Two goals at either end that we made out of scrap wood and a couple of my mother’s sheets from the house. We had some plywood set up to stop the puck if it went wide. The puck we used was softer than a real puck so that you wouldn’t get hurt if it hit you. It bounced a bit more than a real hockey puck. We used a real puck as well but the softer puck with two goalies wearing baseball mitts in net was a lot more fun.”
Bill Conboy: “I remember seeing Smitty on the ponds. He’s good, but he’s a little younger than me so we can’t be friends right away. That’s the unwritten rule. Then one day I’m walking down Hatherly Road and I look over my right shoulder and I see people skating on a rink in the Smith’s front yard and I think ‘what is that? Could that be a real rink in the yard?’ It was like Field of Dreams to me. Frontyard hockey rinks were rare. I had to find a way to get on that rink. It had to happen. Everyone was there. That I wasn’t invited didn’t matter. I had to get out there. I sat on the sidelines while they played right in front of me until someone said 'Get in the game. You’re next.’ There were a dozen guys out there. It was fantastic.”
Chris continues: “I started skating when I was five or six. My father took a pair of black figure skates and told me to put them on. He had taken them to a guy to get them sharpened and the guy just took the front points of the skates right off. They were still figure skates but at least they looked better. I went to my first practice at the Cohasset Winter Garden with Ed Taylor and I just ran on the ice in those skates. I couldn’t really skate. It was more like running on skates, but I took to it right away. I loved being on the ice. Mrs. Hebert, Garry’s mother, saw me on those skates and gave me a pair of Garry’s old skates, the ones he grew out of. Garry Hebert could really skate. Probably the best skater at the rink at that time. His mother took a liking to me and made sure that I had proper hockey skates. It’s things like that you don’t ever forget. To this day, I warm up by practicing my inside and outside edges, something that Mrs. Hebert taught us as kids one day when she skated with us.
“I loved the game of hockey right from the beginning. Loved it. I mostly had my brothers’ hand-me-down equipment like pants and pads. My older brothers are Hamp, Jerry, and Dana. Some of the stuff I wore came from Thayer Academy where they played. When Musquashicut pond wasn’t yet frozen and we wanted a place to play, we’d find ponds in the woods to play on. These ponds were covered with trees so they weren’t wide open like Musquashicut. We were lucky if we had an open surface of thirty or forty feet. Guys like Sean Murphy, Kevin Murphy, Corey Griffin, David Keiran, Tommy Sheehan and a few other Minot guys skated there. I think Jimmy Grip used to skate on these same ponds when he was a kid. Because there were so many small trees, we used to stickhandle between them. That’s how I really learned to handle a puck, back and forth between the trees. It was a great way to develop quick hands in hockey. Stickhandling through trees is good for your hands.
“My oldest brother Hamp played football and hockey at Thayer. He played on a football team that was un-un-un. Unbeaten, untied, and un-scored on. My father loved football. He played both football and hockey at Colgate. My father was also a scout for Colgate. He scouted guys like Mike Milbury and Rod Langway, who were great football players as well as hockey players. He also scouted Danny Shakespeare and Gary Mahoney, two outstanding hockey players from Scituate who I knew.
“My dad took me to a Colgate University alumni hockey game when I was thirteen. He played in the game for the alumni and I got to skate on that ice. My dad introduced me to the Colgate coach who went on to coach the Hartford Whalers. I met Tommy Earl, a Colgate player who went on to play five years for the Whalers in the WHA. I also met Dave Conte, a 1971 Colgate grad who became a scout and senior executive for the New Jersey Devils. Years later, my dad took my son Connor to another Colgate silver puck alumni game. Connor got to meet Andy McDonald, a Colgate grad who won a Stanley Cup with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks back in 2007.
“There were a lot of other things to do in Minot when the ponds weren’t frozen. I played golf and tennis. I won the club championship in tennis at Hatherly. My grandfather was the president of the club many years ago. In high school I was on the high school golf and tennis teams, but hockey was the focus for me growing up. The fact that Hatherly Country Club was right across the street helped.
“I was on that Scituate Braves Peewee team that won the MA State Championship. Drew Higgins was the coach that year. It was 1973. The team was loaded. One of the best players in the whole state was Garry Hebert. Others on that team were Alan Litchfield, Sean Mahoney, Johnny Reidy, Bubba Fallon, Danny Higgins, Joe Sullivan, Dave DelGrosso, and Bobby and Stephen Breen. I think we played a hundred games over two years and lost just a couple. We played against Jay Miller’s Natick Comets that year and beat them. It seemed that every tournament we went to, we won. We even won a big invitational tournament in Lake Placid that year.
“We got to go to the Boston Garden because our coach knew some people who may have been connected politically. We met Kevin White, the mayor of Boston. We got to see the locker room where the Bruins dressed. We saw where the player’s entrance was - where they drove into the building. I saw Derek Sanderson drive his Rolls Royce right into the building. There was fur on the dashboard of his Rolls. He was my idol. I saw Bobby Orr putting his stuff on. I watched Don Marcotte taking snapshot after snapshot off the goalposts about an inch off the ice. One after the other. I saw Phil Esposito drive into the Garden in his Cadillac. As a matter of fact, the Bruins came down to Hatherly after they won the second Cup in the summer of 1972. I saw them there. Got a bunch of autographs. I went to use the urinal at the club and Johnny ‘Pie’ McKenzie was standing next to me.
“I remember my first pair of brand-new hockey skates. I was probably twelve. My father took me to Holovak & Coughlin Sporting Goods in Arlington. He bought me a pair of Tacks. I got fitted for them. I took them home and stuck them in a bucket of hot water and wore them to bed. Slept in them that first night. I also used to put a curve on my own stick. I needed a little bend at the tip to hold the puck.
Chris continues: “There’s a few people that I need to mention and thank for helping me pursue hockey when I was this age. First is my mom. She practically raised the six of us by herself. My mother is a gifted artist and athlete who worked every day to support us. I remember her baking apple pies for the other parents who were kind enough to bring me to hockey games and practices. My older brother Jerry also drove me to many games and practices. He really stepped up and helped me when I needed it. Once when he was taking me to Cohasset Winter Garden for a game, he ran a stop sign in North Scituate and the cops pulled us over. We may have been late getting there, but we made it. And I have to mention Marshall Litchfield, Alan’s father. Mr. Litchfield and his wife were always offering me rides to games and practices. Without them, I probably wouldn’t have had the success I had playing hockey.
“My sophomore year in high school I played varsity hockey and did okay. I had ten goals and four assists. I wish I played as a freshman when they went to the Garden the year before, but there just wasn’t any room for me on that team. My junior year I only played three games on varsity. I blew my knee out early in the season. I did a toe-drag on a kid and as I’m going by him he sticks his leg out and catches my knee. I’ve got him beat but he cheap shots me and my knee just buckled. I had a cast on for months. I played a number of games that same year for the South Shore Clippers, a junior hockey team. Some of the best hockey players in the area were recruited to play for the Clippers and I jumped at the opportunity. It was a fighting league and we traveled all over the state. There were some very talented guys in that league and it was good experience for me.
“The injury to my knee, however, set me back. It kept me off the ice for almost a year and it took several months for me to get back to where I was physically. I felt that my skills were really starting to develop going into my junior year and that hit to my knee was really unfortunate. It really came at the worst possible time for me. But I toughed it out and after a few months of skating drills, the knee felt stronger. I wore a brace on that knee for almost a year as I was concerned about hurting it again.
“My senior year there was a new high school hockey coach, Bill McKeever. I was intent on playing junior A hockey for the South Shore Braves that year but Coach McKeever approached me about playing for Scituate High School. I preferred to play junior hockey because of the competition, but we talked about a situation in which I could play both. If there was a conflict, I would play for my junior team. Coach McKeever allowed the team to make the decision on whether or not I should play. They actually held a players-only meeting and my teammates voted to put me on the team. I thought we had it worked out but I guess some parents didn’t like that idea and McKeever didn’t want to press it. But it worked out. Of course I wanted to play for my own high school, but I needed the experience of junior A.
“My best friend on the high school team was Michael Galvin. He was a co-captain that year and he wanted me to play. I wanted to play for my own high school. But it was fourteen high school games against sixty games at the junior hockey level. So I played a full schedule for the Braves that year while I was a senior in high school, but I kept tabs on how all my high school friends were doing. Brian Bertoni from Quincy was on my Braves team - he was a great hockey player.
“One of my best friends, Chris Griffin, played with me on the Braves that year. He was out of high school already and a very good hockey player. Chris was as tough a hockey player as there ever was. Good fighter. His knuckles were always torn up. His friends called him Frita – I’d call him an enforcer. One time on the bench I mouthed off to the coach about something and he started to come towards me. Frita stepped in and kept him from getting at me. He was a good guy to have on your side. We had a good team and the level of play really helped me develop my skills. We had a practice every day, which you don’t get in high school. I should point out that back then we didn’t have to pay for anything. Today, of course, it can cost parents a small fortune to have their kid play junior hockey.
“Fernie Flaman from Northeastern used to come to some of those South Shore Braves games scouting for talent. The head coach Bobby Silva advised me to play another year. I was okay but I needed to work on my skills to get to that higher level. But I was impatient. I should’ve played another year with the Braves, but I had to move on. I decided to go to North Adams and play hockey there. I had met the coach when I was a senior in high school. There was one other kid from my junior team – Jimmy Moore from Quincy - that went there with me. Andy Marhoffer, an excellent goalie from Scituate, also went to North Adams. It was good hockey. Gary Cooney from Scituate was there. A kid from Acton-Boxboro named Brad Feltus. Gerry McDonald from Braintree, a very good hockey player, was there. It was Division 2, but it was very good hockey. North Adams played in the ECAC West. We had some good teams in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One year we made it to the ECAC Finals against Plattsburg State College in front of 5,000 crazy fans. Jacques Lemaire, the former Montreal Canadien Hall of Famer, coached them.
“My father, who had been living in Florida, showed up out-of-the blue at a playoff game we had against Elmira College. They were ranked #2 in the country. I scored twice and we won the game. I didn’t realize he was there until he approached me after the game. It was a shock, but a memory of my father that I will remember forever. He also watched my son Connor win a state title at Duxbury High School in 2007 and a national junior college championship at Monroe Community College. It was a thrill to have my dad share in these hockey experiences. I will never forget it.
“After North Adams, I had to go somewhere to play hockey. I decided to go to England. Andy Marhoffer had gone over to Nottingham to play and he gave me the number of someone to call over there. After I landed at Heathrow airport, I called the guy up. He says come up to this camp and try out, so I went up there. I didn’t make that team but I heard they regretted it a year later when I led the league in goals scored. As a matter of fact, I led the league in scoring for three years. One year I scored 114 goals in 28 games. I averaged over four goals a game that year. These were high-scoring games, 12-10, 9-6, scores like that. It was not a high-grade league, however. I started to put it all together late. I was 26 or 27 years old when I felt I finally had my skills at a decent level. I was a late bloomer – I finally was able to put on some weight and get up to 188 lbs. I really had a blast playing in that league.
“I scored what was then the fastest goal in British hockey history in Blackpool, England. It was a dinky little rink, maybe one hundred twenty feet end-to-end. It was perfect for me. Not really built for hockey, but for figure skating. I took a faceoff at center ice to start the game, caught the puck just right, and flipped it thirty feet into the air. The goalie can’t see it in the lights and lands right behind him and trickles in. That’s a true story.
“One time after a game, the Blackpool police knocked on the door of my flat and told me I that I had to go downtown with them. It turns out some fans for the opposing team said that I had put a cheap shot on a kid on their team. This was after a game in which a kid on the other team was hit and banged his head. They wanted to question me about what I knew. I was there for a few hours and they asked me about hockey – Was it fast? Was it dangerous? Can you get hurt? These types of questions. I was a little nervous but I answered all their questions. It turned out the kid that got hit from behind was badly hurt – he was in a coma for a few weeks. However, it wasn’t an intentional hit that hurt him. After a while the police sent me home.
“I loved being over there in Europe. The first year I lived with two Canadian imports in our own place. In European hockey, each team was allowed three imports (foreign-born players) and the rest were from the host country. Our own flats were in a building owned by a guy that loved hockey. That was great. We’d find stuff to do when we weren’t playing. One year after the season was over, we went down to Benidorm, Spain for three or four weeks. Benidorm is a seaside resort on the Mediterranean. Beautiful spot. In Blackpool, I would go down to the market and buy chicken hearts. I could buy a bag of chicken hearts for maybe a buck. I’d also buy fish sticks and fry them up. After a week or so, all the market people knew me. Sometimes, they wouldn’t let me pay. It was great there.
“I could only be abroad for six months at a time. You could get the visa extended but after the season I would come back to Scituate and work. I worked as a sternman on a lobster boat. Those were unbelievable times for me – I would play hockey in Europe for six or seven months and come back here to catch lobster. I loved it. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”
After three years in Europe, Chris came back to Scituate. Recently married, and with a young child born in England, Chris decided that it was time to make a living. He could have continued playing hockey professionally in Europe but it would require dragging his child across Europe and that didn’t seem right. Hockey was always on his mind, but he had to make more money. He started framing houses then began investing in real estate properties. He’s currently an independent insurance adjuster and keeps a hand in real estate. Chris coached youth hockey in Duxbury for a few years. His two sons Connor and Chace went through the program. They both went on the play junior hockey at a competitive level. Chris and his gorgeous Polish wife Natalia live with their beautiful, skiing, dancing, tennis-playing, writer-artist daughter Sophia (The Blonde Monkey) Smith in Duxbury.
Chris Smith is a true character. You can see it in his face. He’s got a certain look in his eyes that is both wise and mischievous. Like he’s part James Bond and part Derek Sanderson. He took to hockey immediately as a kid and worked on his skating and stickhandling skills for years until he was satisfied that he was good enough to play at a high level. What makes Chris a bit of an enigma is that he really doesn’t focus on his own accomplishments. He doesn’t need to talk about himself. He’d rather talk about his teammates, his kids, and the Minot neighborhood he grew up in. And he has dozens of friends from years of playing hockey at every level who will humbly offer up one of the greatest compliments ever for an athlete – “Chris Smith has the best hands I ever saw.”
Edited April 8, 2019