Smith holds unique place in Cup history on what would've been 100th birthday

Gordie Howe wasn't the only person to ask the question in 1949, but surely Mr. Hockey was the most famous.

"Who’s Sid Smith?" the Detroit Red Wings superstar asked April 10, 1949, not derisively but with genuine puzzlement.

The unheralded Smith, who was born 100 years ago this July 11, had just scored all three of the Toronto Maple Leafs' goals in a 3-1 victory in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final.

Seventy-six years later, Smith's record of scoring three power-play goals in a Stanley Cup Final game still stands.

Maple Leafs goalie Turk Broda sits between Fleming MacKell (l.) and Sid Smith in the team's Olympia Stadium dressing room in Detroit on April 10, 1949. Smith scored all three of Toronto's goals in a 3-1 victory in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final.

It would be the second consecutive season that the Maple Leafs would sweep the Red Wings to win the NHL championship, Smith's second of three Stanley Cup titles, a third to come in 1951.

He wasn't the biggest name on the 1948-49 Maple Leafs, playing just one regular-season game, a 2-2 tie Jan. 9 in Detroit. And Smith was a late addition to the Maple Leafs playoff roster for Games 4 and 5 of the NHL Semifinal against the Boston Bruins, brought in as a reserve from the Pittsburgh Hornets of the American Hockey League.

He made his presence felt in Game 4, scoring twice on goalie Frank Brimsek and adding an assist in a 3-1 win at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto soon advancing to the Final for what would prove to be its historic third consecutive championship, a feat never before accomplished in the NHL.

"He's our secret weapon from Pittsburgh!" Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe said of his imported farmhand, who took Vic Lynn's spot on left wing.

Maple Leafs' Sid Smith on April 10, 1949 after having scored a hat trick in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final, and in the uniform of the Whitby Dunlops for the 1958 IIHF World Championship. Smith was playing captain on the team that won the gold medal in Oslo, Norway.

And then Smith made history of his own in Game 2 of the Final against Detroit, scoring his three power-play goals against goalie Harry Lumley.

Two of them came in span of 66 seconds in the first period, on the same man-advantage, during a time when a full minor penalty was served, with Red Wings forward Pete Horeck in the box for an elbowing minor.

Smith completed his natural hat trick at 17:58 of the second period with Ted Lindsay off for holding.

Smith lived to the age of 78, dying in Wasaga Beach, Ontario on April 29, 2004. More than 20 years since his passing, his Stanley Cup Final record survives, most recently challenged this spring by Florida Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk, who scored two power-play goals in Game 4 against the Edmonton Oilers.

Sid Smith and Bill Barilko (r.) in Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens dressing room in February 1947, during the rookie season of both players.

Smith arrived with the Maple Leafs for the 1946-47 season, having played junior hockey for the Oshawa Generals and senior with the Toronto Staffords and Quebec Aces.

It wasn't an easy road. In the mid-1940s, in his late teens, the Toronto native tried out for Hershey of the American Hockey League and was showing great promise. But during a practice he learned that his father had died in Toronto, leaving his younger brother and sister alone with his mother.

"He skated over to the bench and sat down for five minutes, went to the dressing room, changed and headed home," Art Smith, his brother, told the Toronto Star in a 2004 obituary.

The Maple Leafs signed Smith to a contract Oct. 8, 1946, and sent him to their AHL affiliate in Pittsburgh. He made his NHL debut Feb. 6, 1947 in Montreal against the Canadiens, and he scored his first two goals in his second and third career games, at home against Boston and Montreal, while shuffling back and forth between the minors and the NHL.

Toronto's Joe Klukay (l.), Max Bentley (c.) and Sid Smith skate together for a publicity photo taken at Maple Leaf Gardens.

His excellent numbers with Pittsburgh in 1948-49 -- he led the league with 112 points (55 goals, 57 assists) in 68 games -- were impossible for the Maple Leafs to ignore. Following his dazzling hat trick against Detroit in the 1949 Final, Smith was up full time with Toronto starting in 1949-50 for the next nine seasons. He finished his time in the NHL in 1957-58 with 369 points (186 goals, 183 assists) in 601 games, all with the Maple Leafs.

Smith was named the 14th captain in franchise history, given the role in September 1955 upon the retirement of team legend Ted Kennedy. But the weight of the letter seemed heavy on his sweater, and Smith slumped to just four goals in 55 games in 1955-56, down from his NHL career-high 33 in 70 games the previous season.

He yielded the captaincy to Jimmy Thomson in 1956-57 and his production rebounded to a degree, up to 17 goals in 70 games, his final full season with Toronto.

Smith announced his retirement from the NHL on March 19, 1957, with the Maple Leafs missing the playoffs. He was just 31.

Maple Leafs coach King Clancy (l.) and trainer Tim Daly make Sid Smith's team captaincy official at training camp Sept. 23, 1955 at Garden City Arena in St. Catharines, Ontario. Smith wore the "C" for a single season.

"I have no grievances," he said. "I merely think that the time has come for me to step down and make way for some younger players."

He'd reconsider during the summer and return for the start of 1957-58, but he'd fallen out of favor with Maple Leafs management. Smith played 12 games and then was waived through the NHL on Nov. 11, 1957.

He'd scored 20 or more goals in six straight seasons (1949-55) and played in the NHL All-Star Game in seven of eight seasons from 1949-57, renowned for his speed and powerful shot. But there was something more.

Smith had a brilliant touch at the net, often scoring with tip-ins or on rebounds.

Toronto's Ted Kennedy (l.) and Sid Smith have some fun with goalie Lois Maxwell (aka Miss Moneypenny of early James Bond films), a Toronto native, during the 1946-47 season at Maple Leaf Gardens.

"It became my trademark, in a way," he told hockey historian Joe Pelletier in an interview. "The thing was to keep an eye on the puck coming in from the point or in the direction of the net and just make that slight deflection because it threw the goalie off.

"He'd play it for the shot from the point or wherever it's from and I'm just sort of cruising in and making a deflection. Or sometimes you caused a problem with the goalie. He'd lose sight of it because you're hanging around."

Smith largely played within the rules, winning the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy in 1952 and 1955. In his 601 career games, he was assessed just 90 penalty minutes.

"He was always in the game. He wasn't a rough, tough player, but he was smart," Kennedy said upon Smith's death. "He would rank in the top five or six real natural goal-scorers that I played with and against."

Sid Smith in a publicity photo as a member of the 1957-58 Whitby Dunlops, and signing autographs for young fans at Upper Canada College in Toronto on Jan. 15, 1958 as the team prepared for the 1958 IIHF World Championship in Oslo, Norway.

After being cut by the Maple Leafs, Smith signed immediately as the playing coach of the senior Whitby (Ontario) Dunlops, the team that was chosen to represent Canada at the 1958 IIHF World Championship in Oslo, Norway.

There was regret that his NHL career seemed to be at an end, but joy in what would come with the Dunlops.

"I'm kind of sorry in one way and glad in another because we played for a world championship and we won it," Smith told Pelletier of Canada's 17th global title. "On the other hand, I would have liked to continue on with my [NHL] career and score a few more goals. But winning the world championship against the Russians compensated for everything."

Canada's physical style in Oslo was frowned upon by officials, who Smith recalled turned a blind eye to any stick work by the European teams.

From left, Tod Sloan, captain Ted Kennedy, goalie Al Rollins and Sid Smith pose with the Stanley Cup after the Maple Leafs defeated the Montreal Canadiens to win the 1951 championship.

No matter; Canada went 7-0 in the tournament, including a 4-2 win against the Soviet Union in the gold-medal game, breezing through the tournament with 82 goals for -- Smith scored nine -- and just six against.

Smith played another season with Whitby, helping it win the Allan Cup as Canada's senior champion. His considered a return to the NHL in 1960, at the urging of Maple Leafs boss Punch Imlach, but that hit a dead end when the NHL wouldn't reinstate him following his detour to the amateur game.

He retired to a post-hockey career in business, with a paper mill in Quebec, then in Toronto's photography sector.

On March 10, 1958 in Oslo, basking in the glow of Whitby's victory at the World Championship, Canada Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson having wired the country's congratulations to Norway, Smith even became a sportswriter, the playing coach typing prophetically in a front-page column for the Toronto Daily Star.

Sid Smith is stopped by New York Rangers goalie Marcel Paille during a Nov. 6, 1957 game at Maple Leaf Gardens. He’s checked by Dave Creighton.

"This may sound far-fetched to people in Canada or to hockey players who know that under European rules there is very little bodychecking," he wrote. "But that Russian hockey club can give you a game that will take just as much out of you physically as most teams I have played against.

"I would have to say the Russians are the best conditioned team in Europe. They excel in two departments, shooting and passing. This is every coach's dream. …

"Another feature of their game which stands out is the way they play their positions. They pass to a spot, and in most cases they have a man there."

Fourteen years later, in the historic eight-game 1972 Summit Series between an NHL all-star team representing Canada and a select squad of Soviets, Smith's view proved alarmingly accurate.

Top photo: Sid Smith in a 1950s Toronto Maple Leafs portrait, letters on the team crest in red to appear sharper in a rare color photo, and illustrated on a 1953 "Hockey Night in Canada" coloring book, a premium offered at gas stations across the country. The November 1952 action photo on the cover shows Smith testing Montreal Canadiens goalie Gerry McNeil, checked by captain Butch Bouchard.