Billy Smith

Billy Smith was born in Perth, Ontario, on December 12, 1950. His older brother Gord played defence, so Billy started on the blue line too; by his own account he was not much good there, and when a team found itself short a goaltender one day he put up his hand. He spent the 1969–70 season in the Quebec junior league with the Cornwall Royals, playing 55 regular-season games, and the Los Angeles Kings took him in the fifth round of the 1970 NHL Amateur Draft, 59th overall. They sent him straight to their AHL club in Springfield.

He played 49 games for the Springfield Kings as a first-year pro in 1970–71, then went 9–1 in 11 playoff games as Springfield won the Calder Cup. The next winter he split his time between Springfield and Los Angeles, getting into five NHL games for the Kings. The first was on February 12, 1972, at the Montreal Forum: the Canadiens put 48 shots on him, and Guy Lafleur's goal with 22 seconds left decided a 6–5 Montreal win.

In June 1972 the New York Islanders took him in the Expansion Draft with their second selection, the fourth pick overall in a draft that opened with four straight goaltenders, and he spent the rest of his NHL career on Long Island. For two seasons he split the net with Gerry Desjardins on a club that won 12 games in 1972–73 and 19 in 1973–74. Desjardins left for the World Hockey Association in the summer of 1974, and Smith took on the bulk of the work, playing 58 games in 1974–75 as the Islanders qualified for the playoffs for the first time.

From 1975–76 he shared the crease with Glenn "Chico" Resch, who later told InGoal that the position came to Smith by instinct while he himself worked through a checklist in his head. Smith was named Most Valuable Player of the 1978 All-Star Game in Buffalo on January 24, 1978. On November 28, 1979, in Denver, he became the first goaltender credited with a goal in NHL history. With Colorado leading 4–3 early in the third period and a delayed penalty coming against the Islanders, the Rockies pulled their goaltender for an extra attacker. A Colorado shot bounced off Smith into the corner, where rookie defenceman Rob Ramage picked it up and, without looking, sent it back toward the point. Nobody was there, and the puck slid the length of the ice into the empty Colorado net. Smith had been the last Islander to touch it, so the goal, at 4:50 of the third, went on his record. The Islanders lost the game 7–4.

In the spring of 1980 Smith played 20 playoff games and won 15 of them as the Islanders took the Stanley Cup for the first time, the start of four championships in a row. Resch was traded to Colorado on March 10, 1981, and the net was Smith's alone. In 1981–82 he won 32 games, made the NHL First All-Star Team and won the Vezina Trophy, the first year the award went to the goaltender chosen by the league's general managers rather than to the goaltenders of the team that allowed the fewest goals. In 1982–83 he and Roland Melanson shared the William M. Jennings Trophy, which had taken over the fewest-goals role, and Smith won the Conn Smythe Trophy after going 13–3 with two shutouts and a 2.69 goals-against average in the playoffs. The Islanders swept the Edmonton Oilers in the Final. In Game 1 at Northlands Coliseum he stopped all 35 shots in a 2–0 win over a lineup that included Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey.

The Islanders reached the Final for a fifth consecutive year in 1984. Over the four championship springs, from 1980 through 1983, Smith's playoff record was 57–13. In 1985 the Islanders lost the first two games of a best-of-five series against Washington, both in overtime; Smith was in goal for the three straight wins that followed, finishing with 39 saves in a 2–1 win in Game 5 that, as UPI reported at the time, made New York the first NHL team to win a five-game series after losing the first two.

Smith's nickname was "Battlin' Billy." He left the top of his stick shaft untaped and used the stick on opponents who crowded his crease, and he would not take part in the handshake line at the end of a playoff series. He was named to Canada's roster for the 1981 Canada Cup but did not play in the tournament: a Mike Bossy shot in a pre-tournament practice in Winnipeg cracked a finger on his left hand, and Don Edwards took his place.

Smith played between 37 and 42 games in each of the next four seasons. On March 20, 1988, he won his 300th NHL game with a 35-save, 6–0 shutout of the Jets at Winnipeg Arena, the ninth goaltender to reach 300 wins. He played 17 games in 1988–89 and announced his retirement on June 5, 1989, the same day he was named the Islanders' goaltending coach. He was the last of the club's 1972 expansion picks still on the roster.

In 679 regular-season NHL games Smith went 305–233–105 with a 3.18 goals-against average, a .895 save percentage and 22 shutouts. In 132 playoff games he went 88–36 with a 2.73 goals-against average, a .905 save percentage and five shutouts. His 88 playoff wins were the most by any goaltender when he retired, a mark that stood until 1997.

He spent four seasons as the Islanders' goaltending coach, then followed Bill Torrey, the general manager who had drafted him, to the expansion Florida Panthers in 1993. He was the Panthers' goaltending coach from their first training camp, became an assistant coach in 1998 and left the organization in 2001. That August he rejoined the Islanders as a goaltending consultant and later served as their goaltending coach. In 2017 the OHL's Barrie Colts hired him as their director of goaltending.

The Islanders retired his No. 31 on February 20, 1993, before a home game against Pittsburgh, and he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame later that year. In 2017 the NHL named him one of its 100 Greatest Players.

Sources: NHL.com (statistics, awards, Hall of Fame and 100 Greatest Players); NHL.com, 100 Greatest Players profile; NHL.com, Stan Fischler on Smith's origins; NHL.com, the Islanders' 1972 expansion draft; NHL.com, Vezina Trophy history; Hockey-Reference (career statistics and the box scores of February 12, 1972, November 28, 1979, May 10, 1983 and March 20, 1988); InGoal.