Ben Smith(s)
Hockey East’s weekly preview pointed out that Boston College Eagle Ben Smith is 3 points shy of 100 for his collegiate career – hopefully he’ll reach or pass that in this weekend’s games against UMass and Boston University. He’s one of my favorite players, both on ice and off ice, I don’t think I’ve heard more positive things said about a kid by SIDs (not just BC’s), scouts and media re: off-ice than about Smith – maybe Jonny Toews. David Amstutz’s article for the BC Heights might explain that:
“…Ben Smith is the Mayor.
“Ben thrives when he’s in the public eye,” says a joking Price. “He can be in the worst mood in our room, just bickering with us like any roommate would. And then we’ll walk to class, and he’ll put this face on and hug and kiss babies. That’s why we call him the Mayor.”
“We’ll go into Lower and eat, and it will take ten minutes [to leave] because he’ll stop and talk to everyone,” Lombardi says, laughing. “You can’t go anywhere with Ben Smith on campus.”
“Whenever he goes off to these groups and talks to these people, many of whom we’ve never seen before, we’re all like, ‘Vote for Smitty,’” Price says. “Then when someone walks by and he’s about to do his kiss-babies thing, and they don’t say ‘Hi,’ to him, he gets so upset.” …”
Not sure how I haven’t done a mini-gallery for him before – maybe avoiding having to cut 1000+ images from him playing for BC as well as Team USA and Chicago Blackhawks camps down to the 200 maximum allowed. It was definitely tough.
A few of the 1055 results for “Ben Smith” in my photo archive were for that other Ben Smith so I thought I’d include the recently USA Hockey Hall of Fame inductee while I was at it:
