Floyd Smith (ice hockey)

Smith grew up in Galt, Ontario, playing junior hockey with the Galt Black Hawks. He made his National Hockey League debut for the Boston Bruins, playing 3 games with the team in 1955, but he was mostly mired in the minors during the early portion of his career. He played 23 games with Boston over the next two seasons, while serving as a significant contributor^{[citation needed]} on the Hershey Bears club. Smith then spent five years with the New York Rangers organization, reaching the NHL for a 29-game stint in 1961. During this period, he was a dominant force with the Springfield Indians, scoring 82 points in 71 games in 1960.^[2]

In 1963, Smith finally earned a chance to become an NHL regular after being acquired by the Detroit Red Wings. He scored an NHL career-high 49 points during the 1965–66 season. He was part of a six-player blockbuster transaction in which he was traded along with Norm Ullman and Paul Henderson from the Red Wings to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Frank Mahovlich, Pete Stemkowski and Garry Unger on March 4, 1968. The Maple Leafs and Red Wings were in fifth and sixth place respectively at the bottom of the East Division standings at the time of the deal.^[3] He was selected by the Buffalo Sabres during the 1970 expansion draft and head coach Punch Imlach named Smith as the team's first captain.^[4] He took the ceremonial faceoff for the Sabres against Jean Beliveau of the Montreal Canadiens in the opening home game in Buffalo on October 15, 1970.^[5]

Smith played a few games in the 1971-72 season as a player/assistant coach. A heart attack suffered by Imlach saw Joe Crozier be promoted from the AHL affiliate Cincinnati Swords while Smith retired as a player to become coach of the Swords. He won a Calder Cup with the team in 1973. In 1974, he became Buffalo's head coach after Crozier had a falling out with Imlach. The team roared to a record of 49–16–15, which saw them have a 22-game stretch with just one loss and a 12-game winning streak in February as the Sabres finished with 113 points for a tie with Montreal and Philadelphia. The Sabres faced the Canadiens in the semifinals, winning the first two games only for Montreal to win the next two. The Sabres held it together and won the next two games, which included Game 6 in Montreal to reach their first ever Stanley Cup Final in only their fifth year of existence; notably, a crowd of roughly 15,000 came to greet the team at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. The Sabres were eliminated in the second round the next two years, and he came to terms on a “mutual agreement” with Punch Imlach to step down, with Imlach later being quoted as stating that Smith "wasn't motivating the players."^[6]

He became coach of the World Hockey Association's Cincinnati Stingers for the 1978–79 season. He was hired to coach the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1979, where he coached the first 68 games of the 1979–80 season. On March 14, 1980, while driving in Pennsylvania after a practice had been held in Grand Island, New York, Smith was involved in an accident when his car crossed a highway median that saw two people killed and Smith suffer cuts, bruises, and a broken kneecap.^[7] Dick Duff coached the following two games before Imlach took over as interim coach for the remainder of the season. Smith was charged by the Ontario Provincial Police for impaired driving and criminal negligence, with the latter charge being dropped.^[8] He remained with the Leafs as a scout until being promoted to general manager, a position he held for the 1989–90 and 1990–91 seasons; likely the most noted trade done by Smith involved trading for Tom Kurvers from the New Jersey Devils on October 16, 1989 for a first-round pick in the 1991 NHL entry draft, which the Devils used to draft Scott Niedermayer.^{[9][10][11][12]} He served as a scout until he was let go in April 2001.^[13]

Smith resides in southern Erie County, New York; he was part of the celebrations of the home opener for the 50th season in 2019 that saw him drop the puck for the ceremonial faceoff prior to the game versus the New Jersey Devils.^[14]