Bob Gross writes:
>   On another front, some of you may know that Ben Smith, Dartmouth's head
>coach, is being considered for the head position at Northeastern (the only
>team Dartmouth beat last year!). How does this strike you?
 
It's the first I've heard about it, but then again I have heard so many people
mentioned as "candidates" for this job that I can't even remember them all.
Most of them are just of the "hey, wouldn't it be nice if we could get this
guy" variety.  Even if Smith is being considered by the Northeastern folks,
that doesn't mean he is going to be offered the job or that he would take
it.  It sounds from your message that the people in Hanover are about ready
to ride Smith out of town on a rail, but this sort of thing goes on all the
time.  Heck, the name of Merrimack's Ron Anderson was bandied about by the
Northeastern people as supposedly their top candidate early on, and people
here weren't worried about it.  But I guess that's a bad example since
Anderson has been here for several years and not only has Smith only been at
Dartmouth for a year, the guy that preceded him was only on the job for a few
weeks.
 
>   It seems to many folks at Dartmouth that he doesn't really care about the
>program here (I am paraphrasing some more colorful language). He spent last
>year rebuilding spirit and making the team feel really good about itself
>despite the dismal record. Everyone involved in the program was looking
>forward to next year. In addition, recruiting seems to have gone quite well.
 
Well, a guy I know pretty well who plays for Dartmouth would disagree strongly
with your first sentence and agree strongly with your next three.  I know
because I've asked him specifically what the team thought of Smith.  This
was a few weeks ago and I don't think it has changed very much since.
 
>   If Ben decides to leave now, can Dartmouth even find a coach by next Fall?
>If he decides to stay, how can he maintain the respect of the team who he was
>so ready to abandon?  One of the team members has told me that he doesn't see
>how the team could respect him - even if he decides to stay. This same person
>asked how the team at Northeastern could trust him - he might coach there
>until a better career opportunity came along and then leave Northeastern.
 
Entirely true.  But this is all speculation, and it's too early to let these
stories get to you.  The impression I get is that the team respects Smith
very much, this being from Kevin K. who I've written to Bob about before.
I dug up this mail from a few weeks ago in which I wrote to Keith about
what Kevin said about Smith:
 
*        From:  mike_m (Mike Machnik)
*        Date:  Monday, April 8, 1991   11:52:23 am (EDT)
*     Subject:  stuff
*
*I was talking to a guy I know who plays for Dartmouth (third-line wing), and
*he had some interesting things to say.  He's pretty angry at the administration
*for continuing to show little regard for the hockey team.  Something I
*didn't know was that a couple of years ago, the ECAC agreed to allow
*Brown to relax its academic index so it could try to build up its program
*again.  They were prepared to do the same for Dartmouth, but the school
*shot it down.
*
*He also says the players like Ben Smith far better than Brian Mason.  Mason
*would do things like have the team skate after losing to Harvard (come on),
*and he wasn't a good teacher.  My friend says he learned much more from
*Smith this year than he did all the way through high school and thus far
*at Dartmouth.  That is the type of thing that bodes well for a program.  He
*thinks there is a good future there because of Smith (hey, he recruited
*almost all of this year's BU team) but the school needs to help them out a
*little.
 
>   It also should be pointed out that these stories are out of a number of
>newspapers and have not been confirmed by Ben himself. On the other hand, he
>has been given many opportunities to deny the story and has chosen not to do
>so.
 
How do you know he is so ready to abandon Dartmouth?  You say that these
stories came from newspapers.  I don't think he is required to confirm or deny
every crazy story that some area writer thinks up.
 
At the same time, even if it is true and Northeastern is talking to him,
remember that the man has to do what is best for himself and his family.  From
what I have heard, it is really the administration at Dartmouth that doesn't
care about the hockey program.  It is entirely possible that after a year on
the job, he has had it with all the trouble the administration gives him when
recruiting.  Northeastern may turn out to be more to his liking.  And, it's
also possible that NU will offer him more money.  If Smith leaves, I think
that rather than hanging him in effigy, the Dartmouth administration had
better take a good, long, hard look at whether it really wants to ice a
Division I hockey program and make a commitment one way or another.
 
Finally, there is nothing wrong with Smith listening to offers.  The fact that
he might be doing so does not mean he doesn't care about the program.  Most
of us with jobs in the real world wouldn't think twice of listening to offers
of better jobs, and we wouldn't consider ourselves to not care about our
current jobs.  If a job comes along that is better than our current job, then
in many cases we take it.  It's the same here.  I'm also suggesting that many
of the reasons that the Northeastern job may be more attractive to Smith have
to do with the difference in priority the two schools seem to place upon their
hockey programs.  That's not something Smith can be blamed for.
 
Maybe Steve K. at NU can give us an update on how the search for a coach is
going there, and what he's heard about Smith there.
 
 
- mike