Original Misfit has played 919 NHL games and hopes to join 1,000 games club
Vegas Born and Vegas Born Again. If anyone is qualified to preach the gospel of NHL hockey in Las Vegas, it’s Reilly Smith.
A charter member of the Golden Misfits, a Stanley Cup champion with the Golden Knights and a guy people think of when they see the VGK logo.
Impactful on the ice, in the dressing room and the community, Smith is inextricably tied to the Golden Knights.
Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon traded for Smith last season at the deadline and then extended the 34-year-old winger this summer for another season.
Smith has been skating at City National Arena and sat down for a few minutes to chat about his offseason.
“Good summer. Relaxing. Spent it here in Vegas and a lot of family time. Tried to golf a little bit and a lot of time in the pool with the kids,” said Smith. “I’m just happy to be back here. Extremely comfortable in this organization and the system and being able to play here knowing that we’re going to push for the Stanley Cup is an exciting thing and happy to be here early and working out and skating and it’s nice to see some of the new faces.”
Smith is talented. He’s scored 20-or-more goals on five occasions in the NHL. Over 919 NHL games he’s amassed 226 goals and 553 points. His professionalism is a cut above which could result in him playing in his 1,000 NHL regular season game in Game 81 of the Golden Knights schedule.
“Yeah. It’s going to have to be a very healthy season. Going to have to work on my flexibility and make sure that I’m not letting anything flare up. That’s exciting for me. I know it’s a hard thing to achieve later in your career for sure,” said Smith. “It’s something that I definitely want to be able to do this year. It’d be nice to do that in this jersey. It’s one of those individual goals that you don’t really think about. But if you get there, it says a lot about just what you’re able to do in your career.”
Players like Smith don’t focus on individual marks. Their drive is based on helping the team win game in and game out. But 1,000 games is a standard only about five percent of all NHL players are able to reach.
“I was happy just to be able to play a game in the NHL and then you knock that milestone off and then you move on to the next one,” said Smith. “It hasn’t been until maybe a year or two ago where I thought maybe there’s a possibility that I could get to a thousand games because there’s a lot of luck that’s involved too. Injuries are always something that derails that goal. I still have a really long way to go and try not to think about it too much. I think the whole experience of being able to play that many games is about the journey that you really want to relish and enjoy. So if you’re worried about getting injured every game, it’s not the way you want to live. But it’d be something special. We will cross that bridge when we get to it, I guess.”
It’s early August and Smith is already hanging around the rink. His fitness level has always been high but he says he’s tweaked his preparation over time.
“As you get older you realize that the window of getting better, getting faster, quicker is smaller and smaller every year. Your body isn’t able to adapt the way it used to when you were 22 and 23. Part of it is getting healthy, part of it is working on flexibility,” said Smith. “The longevity of the season is one of your biggest enemies. Playing an 82-game season when you’re 34 years old is a lot harder than when you’re 25. So, I’m just getting ready to cope with things like that. You still want to work on small parts of your game that you think you can get better, but I think the big physical jumps are harder to make. I always think your first touch on the puck is the most important one you have and if you can get your head up and your feet moving all at once then you put yourself in a better spot. Things like that, you always want to try to get better at in the off-season. You don’t want to be going through that learning curve while you’re playing. A lot of it is probably the smaller things in the game. You go up to the gym and you’re not trying to bench press or front squat 300 pounds. Instead, you’re working on all the little tiny muscles so you don’t get something to flare up while you’re playing.”
It hasn’t been all work for Smith this summer.
“For me, I come to the rink and work out and golf, try to get them both in if I get up early enough,” he said. “And then my kids usually nap from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., and then I come back and the first thing they want to do is go in the pool for a couple of hours. So we’ll go in the pool or we’re lucky enough that we have a few parks nearby. We go on a family walk, bring the dog to one of the three play playgrounds around our neighborhood and just have fun with the kids. By the time we get back, it’s cook dinner, bath time, and books in bed.”
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