New Face In The Crowd

Original post date: Friday, November 9, 2007

Who knew Mike Smith of the Dallas Stars was funny?

Actually, your first question might be: who is Mike Smith? The answer: the 25-year-old backup for Turco. He was one of the only ones I saw at the Toyota Center ice on my break today; it was him, two Stars players, and three coaches. I was really looking forward to seeing the highest-scoring American-born player. Damn.

But let’s move back to Mike Smith and his generic name.

I love it when players show off a bit of personality on the ice (and PLENTY was shown today). After one of the coaches scored on Smith, he skated in a circle, put his stick between his legs, and started cheering. He promptly fell on his back and continued to cheer. I thought this was hilarious; that is, until Smith joined in the fun. He skated from the net to the red line, put his stick between his legs, sat down, and glided all the way to the other end of the ice. When he reached the other end he fell back and spun on his back with his legs in the air. Just imagine this with full goalie gear on. Then he started to skate around backwards and doing crossovers with big-ass pads on while shooting pucks into the net. This was some excellent entertainment until he came back on the ice without his upper-body padding on and surprised me. He had a regular stick and gloves on and started shooting around with one of the players. So did you know that Smith can actually shoot the puck with accuracy? He also took a slap A La Cammy, falling onto one knee. Although I’m sure the fall was soft seeing as how he had a mattress pad strapped to his leg. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised and thoroughly amused.

Anyone, please tell me more about this boy. My curiosity has piqued.

And by "boy" I really mean "guy/dude" cuz we're the same age. haha




Game update: The Kings demolish the Stars Saturday night 6-5 in OT.

Here is a picture I took during warmups. You will notice that Mike Smith is looking right at me.