By: Dave McCarthy

When I first had the honour of getting involved with the St. Michael’s Buzzers, it was game four of the 2007 South Division Finals against the Markham Waxers, a series in which the Buzzers were seemingly facing the impossible – a three games to none deficit. Little did I realize at the time the feverish rivalry between these two teams, much less that this series would end up being the latest instalment to Buzzers lore.

Never having witnessed a Buzzers game, I was faced with the daunting task of jumping into the play by play chair, still very green in my own right. All I had to do was familiarize myself with forty plus names in the setting of some of the most passionate, intense hockey I had ever seen with over a thousand people crammed into St. Michael’s College School Arena and (according to our web statistic) approximately five hundred people watching and listening online. “Don’t screw up,” was the phrase that kept running through my head. Reassuring, right?

Well as I navigated my way through the line up card, trying to learn on the fly, one player just kept standing out to me: #14 Brendan Smith. You could not help but notice him. A dazzling skater with tremendous vision, Smith was a guy that could skate the puck out of trouble and turn nothing into something on most shifts. Often he would carry the puck up the ice and into the offensive zone, sometimes all the way behind the net but always end up as the first man back. To me, he seemed like a cross between Scott Niedermayer and how I would have guessed Bobby Orr played from the stories my dad had told me and the odd highlight rolled on “Coach’s Corner.”

I remember turning to Mike Bagley, a VP with the Buzzers who was instrumental in developing the webcast production that has since become a staple of Buzzers’ home games, who was beside me in the media tower after the first period of game four (Smith had drawn an assist on Bryan Potacco’s goal at the 18:19 mark of the first) and saying, “Who’s this Smith kid? He’s unbelievable.” Realizing I had already identified one of the gems, Mike casually responded, “Yeah, he can play,” with the slightest grin that I now realize meant something along the lines of, “Just you wait and see.”

Turns out I was right and that Smith kid could play. He went on to record six more points over the remaining three games in that series as the Buzzers stormed back to win in dramatic fashion in game seven on Richard Ryan’s goal at the 17:20 mark of triple overtime. Later that summer, Smith was selected twenty seventh overall by the Detroit Red Wings in the 2007 National Hockey League Entry Draft and with that, the journey to the NHL for the young defenseman out of Mimico, Ontario had begun.

I like to think that identifying Smith as something special so quickly means that I could have a future as an NHL scout but the truth is, rarely is scouting that easy. Smith is the kind of player that made scouts’ jobs easy but not too many players like that come along.

On Thursday, following a standout junior year with the University of Wisconsin Badgers in which he led all NCAA defensemen in scoring, earned himself a nomination for the Hobey Baker Award and helped lead the Badgers to the NCAA National Championship game against Boston University, Smith, a Buzzer from 05-07, finally realized his NHL dream when he signed a three year entry level deal with the Detroit Red Wings.

“It was a great feeling, I have to give a lot of credit to all the players I’ve played with and all my coaches from way back, there’s just so many to name,” explained Smith, shortly after signing his contract. “Dave Gagner (with the Toronto Marlies minor midgets) and Steve Thomas, who helped us out with the St. Michael’s Buzzers and guys like head coach Mike Eaves and coach Mark Osiecki (both with the Badgers) and everybody who’s ever been there for coaching and helped me, they’ve all had a part in my progress. So for me signing the deal, I kind of look back on all that has happened and it was a great feeling.”

As the Red Wings are beginning to age specifically on defence with the jury out on how many more years the soon-to-turn forty Nik Lidstrom will continue for and Brian Rafalski about to turn thirty six, the time could be right for Smith to try to slide into the Red Wings line up, if not next season, then in a year or two from now. Smith explained that the Red Wings have not put any limitations on where he could end up next season, saying instead that with hard work over the summertime and a solid training camp, he can control his own destiny.

“What they’ve been telling me is to have a big summer, get bigger and stronger and then you can control where you’ll be,” said Smith. “I kind of like that feeling because to me it means the harder I work this summer, it could put me on the big squad next year and that’s what I’m obviously going out to accomplish.”

Smith will not be entirely new to the Red Wings when he arrives at camp in the fall of 2010 having attended the annual prospects camp each of the past three summers. Competing against other Red Wings hopefuls from the Canadian Hockey League, European leagues and the Grand Rapids Griffins of the American Hockey League proved to be invaluable experience that Smith said will benefit him this fall.

“The biggest thing is just understanding how great the other players are from the CHL and some of the players that have been playing in the AHL with Grand Rapids, you get a feel for other types of styles, not just the NCAA,” Smith explained about his experiences at Red Wings prospect camp. “To get to the next level is going to be a big step for me, I think it will be equivalent to my step from the Buzzers to Wisconsin so I’m really going to have to dial in this summer and get ready for it.”

Perhaps the Red Wings ought to dial in and get ready for Brendan Smith. I would not be surprised if it is not long before someone in Detroit says, “Who’s this Smith kid? He can play.” Congratulations Brendan!