Barry Smith (ice hockey coach)

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Barry Smith (born August 21, 1952 in Buffalo , New York ) is an American ice hockey coach who has been the Director of Player Evaluation of the Chicago Blackhawks in the National Hockey League since January 2019 .

Career

In 1972, Barry Smith graduated from Ithaca College with a Master of Education majoring in sports. He had played ice hockey and American football in college .

He began his coaching career in 1975 when he became the head coach of the ice hockey team at Elmira College . He won the title of the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference three times with the team and took part once in the final of the NCAA .

After six years at Elmira College, he left North America and trained teams in Sweden and Norway in the years that followed. At the same time he was assistant coach of the Norwegian national ice hockey team and as a scout of the NHL team Buffalo Sabers responsible for the European players.

In 1986 he returned to his homeland and became assistant to legendary coach Scotty Bowman in Buffalo. He stayed there until 1989 after Bowman's departure. He returned to Europe for a year and took over the job as head coach of the Italian club HC Alleghe and the Italian national ice hockey team .

Back in the US, he was appointed assistant coach to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the NHL under head coach Bob Johnson . The season was very successful and the team won their first Stanley Cup . After the season, Johnson resigned from office because of cancer which he died of five months later. Scott Bowman took over the team and Smith continued to be part of the team that could defend the Stanley Cup.

Together with Bowman, Smith left the Pittsburgh Penguins in the summer of 1993 and both moved to the Detroit Red Wings . In 1996 he worked as an assistant for the Swedish national team at the World Cup of Hockey and took over the post as head coach of the Malmö Redhawks from the Swedish Elitserien and stayed in Sweden until the end of the season. But he returned in time for the NHL playoffs back to Detroit, where he was able to celebrate the 1997 Stanley Cup victory with the Red Wings. In 1998 the Red Wings defended the Stanley Cup. In between he was an assistant coach with the Swedish national team at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano . During the 1998/99 season , Smith and Dave Lewis , who were also assistant coaches in Detroit at the time, took over as head coaches as Bowman complained of health problems.

After Bowman's return, they were able to celebrate another Stanley Cup victory in 2002. The head coach then announced his retirement and Dave Lewis was his successor. Barry Smith worked for another two years on the Red Wings coaching staff.

After the failure of the 2004/05 season , Smith left the Red Wings after 12 years and was Wayne Gretzky's assistant coach at the Phoenix Coyotes in August 2005 .

After two disappointing years in Phoenix, he left the team to take on the post of head coach of SKA St. Petersburg in the Russian Super League . There he worked for three years and always reached the playoffs with the team without achieving any particular success. Smith then worked as a scout for the Chicago Blackhawks . In March 2011 he accepted an offer from HC Lugano to act as head coach. On October 22, 2011, Smith resigned as head coach of HC Lugano with immediate effect after the team suffered a 9-0 defeat in the away game at Kloten Flyers .

Then Smith returned to the Blackhawks, where he was henceforth Director of Player Development and Director of Player Evaluation . In the wake of the dismissal of Joel Quenneville , he returned to Chicago as a coach behind the gang when the Blackhawks put him to the new head coach Jeremy Colliton aside. In January 2019, however, he returned to his role as Director of Player Evaluation .

Achievements and Awards

As an assistant coach

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ nzz.ch, Lugano's coach Smith throws down
personal data
SURNAME Smith, Barry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American ice hockey coach
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Buffalo , New York