Smith Plays A Leading Role The ‘Next Greg Leeb’ Has Arrived

It was only an intrasquad game, but in it was the kind of move winners make.

The kid scoots across the blue line, pulls up and lets the action flow by. The 16-year-old holds the puck, a teammate comes open and he slides it on to him.

The passer, barely 135 pounds, had been invited to camp that summer two seasons back. But before Tim Smith was farmed out to a Junior A team in Lebret, Saskatchewan, he was making plays in Spokane that Greg Leeb might have made.

That thought even seems to have crossed Greg Leeb’s mind.

Leeb - now with the International League’s Michigan K-Wings - is quick and small and a skilled fan favorite. That day in the Arena two years ago, he was in his final season in Spokane, a major junior star who made it a point to mention to Smith how he’d liked what he’d just seen, Smith delaying at the blue line.

“He told me it was a good play,” Smith said Tuesday, before the Chiefs headed west for tonight’s Western Hockey League game in Seattle. With nine games left, the Chiefs and the Prince George Cougars are in a two-team stretch drive for the regular-season division championship, and the No. 1 playoff seed out of the WHL West.

The encounter with Leeb was brief - the Chiefs’ little big man meeting a potential Next Greg Leeb. “It’s a play he would have made,” Smith said. “When he said he liked it, I was pumped.”

It didn’t take long for deflation to kick in. Spokane was preparing to host the Memorial Cup that year.

They would trade for age and experience. There was no place for a 5-foot-8 16-year-old, however promising the talent.

The following season - last year - Leeb-like flashes from Smith were scarce. Leeb-like flashes from anybody were scarce.

But at 18, comfortable on the left wing on the Chiefs’ first line with Derek Schutz and Brent McDonald, Tim Smith is mounting a challenge this season that Leeb at his best never came close to.

Heading into tonight’s game, Smith is closing on Brad Moran of Calgary, the league leader in assists. With just under an assist a game - 60 in 62 games - Smith has more than tripled his output of a year ago.

His emergence is behind the surge of good fortune in Spokane. A barely noticed particle of last year’s disappointment, when the Chiefs finished last, Smith is now the dominating presence that last summer coach Mike Babcock hinted he could be.

It’s not only winning that has the Chiefs leading the league in attendance. It’s how they’re winning.

Excitement is back in the Arena, and Smith is often its source. That’s something he’s had to prove every step of the way. As a 14-year-old, he was cut from his bantam team. Too small.

He came back at 15 to lead the same team in scoring. But while nearly everyone on the team was listed by a WHL club, Smith was waiting for somebody at this level to notice.

Too small.

The bantam draft came and went without his name being called.

Perhaps because of its recent history with Leeb, Spokane invited him to camp, listed him and sent him to Junior A Lebret, Saskatchewan.

There, Smith languished as a fourth-liner in an older league (“That team had like 9 20-year-olds,” he says. “It was a hard year.”).

The timing that never seemed to work out began to change here last year, when the Chiefs, at the February trade deadline, turned to their youth, swallowed the poison of youthful mistakes, missed the playoffs and pointed to the future.

Few thought of Tim Smith as the vanguard of that youth movement but here he is, an all-star skating with 20-year-olds McDonald and Schutz.

Schutz is enjoying a career year, in part because of the playmaking presence of Smith on his line. The connection is mutually beneficial.

“It’s helped moving to the wing this year (from center),” Smith said. “There’s a lot more responsibility in your own end at center. I’m still learning. But watching Schutzie, I understand what it takes to play center, down low, in your own end.”

With long blond hair, wispy sideburns and red goatee, Smith wears the stamp of individuality, a ‘70s-era throwback who wears a purple Huskies cap and a Cougars T-shirt (“my political correctness,” he says).

There are players in this league who suggest that the Chiefs, with their dogged commitment to hard work, impressive depth and emphasis on the forecheck, are a collection of two dozen robots. The system works but to call it robotic is not to notice Tim Smith.

And that’s impossible, unless you’re not paying attention. Smith is not easy to ignore, in or out of the rink.

He enters tonight’s game tied for fifth in the league in scoring.

When Smith scans the stats and sees his name among the best in the WHL, he knows the dream has finally taken substance.

“I didn’t know what kind of a year I’d have, or where I’d stand with the team,” he said. “To have a shot at leading the WHL in assists is just unbelievable. I was just going with the flow. At first I thought if I kept it up, great. If I didn’t…” He would have met expectations.

“Now,” he says, “it’s actually to where I believe it, that I can do it day in and day out.

“Everyone has always worried about my size and strength. That’s pretty much all I ever hear. But if I can do this at this level, doesn’t it make sense that I would do it at the next level, when the same players move up?”

Refute that.

Tim Smith can drive home a point off the ice, too.