Dave Smith Not Returning At RPI

Reflections on a strong start and "what-ifs" that will always surround his tenure

Stephen: The date is February 29th, 2020. RPI has just wrapped up their regular season with a 4-1 win over Dartmouth in a game that was never in doubt. The players gather around and joyously sing Hail in the locker room. They are on a 4-game winning streak, outscoring their opponents 17-2. They are 11-5-1 in the calendar year and have just clinched the 4th seed and a first round bye in the ECAC playoffs, the program’s first top 4 finish since 2013. They’re one of the hottest teams in the country and seem likely to make it to the ECAC semifinals for the first time since 2002.

Despite it only being year 3 of Dave Smith’s tenure, that was, unfortunately, the high point of it. Soon, the entire world would get stuck in a global pandemic that would essentially shut everything down. The playoffs and remainder of the season were cancelled, and that team’s opportunity went to the wayside.

Still, there was optimism about how the program had progressed and how they could build off that finish. There was no telling what would follow in the coming months and years.

It’s fall of 2020, and the vibes are still good. The start of the hockey season is delayed as the conferences decide on policies to mitigate the COVID risk while playing. The vibes change quickly. The assistant coaches are furloughed. It’s discovered the team isn’t practicing nor allowed to use any facilities at all. The players have been resorting to paying out of pocket for local ice times.

It all shifted permanently when the Ivy League cancelled the hockey season. Soon after, there’s uncertainty about how the rest of the ECAC will proceed. There’s radio silence from the RPI admin as everything stays in a waiting period.

The dam breaks. Star goalie Owen Savory enters the transfer portal, citing the worry that the school won’t play hockey and feeling as though he can’t take the year off and miss out on a year of development. RPI and Union end up following suit as wannabe Ivies. Those 8 teams were the only eastern teams in the entire country to cancel their seasons.

Savory picks UMass Lowell. Tristan Ashbrook, who had had a promising freshman year with 9 goals and 13 points, enters the transfer portal and picks Michigan Tech. Two key core players gone.

They survive that initial wave mostly intact, a couple major pieces gone. Not practicing at all nor having assistants being able to work certainly was bad, but it seemed like they might make it through.

That spring, the administration does the unthinkable. Despite vaccines starting to become available to the public and getting rolled out effectively, the administration refuses to promise the team will play the following season. Another wave of departures follow, this time more than the initial wave. Cory Babichuk, Brady Ferner, and Billy Jerry enter the transfer portal and pick UVM, North Dakota, and LIU. That’s an ECAC rookie of the year finalist and top pairing defenseman gone plus two captains who fill middle of the lineup and depth roles. A significant chunk of the team’s core and leadership is now gone.

The staff hits the transfer portal hard to try to replace what was lost. They get commitments from TJ Walsh and Anthony Baxter who can play key roles in the top 6 and top 4. Jack Agnew and Jake Lee commit after not getting much ice time at Hockey East schools as freshmen to be young core pieces. Late in the summer, Robert Morris cuts its program, and they pick up big winger Justin Addamo.

The damage still isn’t done though. Scott Moser leaves for an assistant role at UVM after the entire furlough and COVID debacle. The administration announces that no “external spectators” will be allowed at home games, limiting attendance to only students and faculty. They are the only program in the country to do this.

That year, they end up having a decent year, especially given all that was lost. Remaining players from the 19-20 team in Ture Linden, Ottoville Leppanen, Jakub Lacka, Jake Johnson, and Simon Kjellberg end up elevating their games and having excellent years. The transfers fill in the gaps in the middle of the lineup to give some depth. Jack Watson emerges as the starter in net. They get one game away from Lake Placid against Harvard, who ends up winning the ECAC title. Optimism returns that maybe they can weather the COVID storm.

Behind the scenes, the opposite was happening. Recruiting battles were being lost left and right due to the COVID policies with the lack of fans and cancellation of the year prior concerning recruits about the school’s commitment and investment in hockey. A couple top commits end up decommitting. Other recruits were concerned with Coach Smith’s lack of a contract extension, wondering if they were committed to him and if they could trust that he’d still be the coach.

The transfer portal opens and all of the key seniors opt to use their 5th year from COVID elsewhere. Two more key underclassmen decide to transfer in Zach Dubinsky and Simon Kjellberg. The program never recovered from this accumulation of losses of players, recruits, coaches, etc.

After all of the departures over the two years and the inability to recruit effectively enough to replace them due to the administration’s choices, the program only declined more. The 22-23 year yielded inconsistent results with a strong start against a weak schedule and a 7th place finish in the league, but the team struggled defensively and was too easy to play against. The 23-24 team bottomed out with even worse defensive play and poor puck possession leading to a 12th place finish; they did manage a first round upset in the ECAC playoffs to make the year feel not totally awful. This season, they improved slightly to 10th, but it was clearly not the improvement the new administration was looking for. They made the coaching change and relieved Dave Smith of his duties.

There will always be multiple “what ifs” with Dave Smith’s tenure as coach at RPI. First, what if COVID doesn’t happen and doesn’t cancel the rest of the 19-20 season? They had a series with Harvard, a team they had just beaten 2-0 on the road, and they were one of the hottest teams in the country. Yes, they probably break the Lake Placid curse, and yes, they had a shot at the ECAC title and NCAA tournament although I think they probably would have bowed out in Lake Placid to the #1 Cornell team.

The second “what if” and the more reasonable one is what if the administration acted like any other one and didn’t do some of the most ridiculous things imaginable. This is the one that really hurts because it was entirely preventable, unlike COVID.

They don’t lose Ashbrook, Babichuk, Jerry, Ferner and Savory; that’s for sure since they were on the roster at the start of the year, and in interviews, all cited the school’s COVID response as the only reason they left. That 2020-21 team had an outstanding blue line and would have been elite defensively. Go look at that roster if you don’t believe me. They had Babichuk, Ferner, Johnson, Kjellberg, Klee, Hallbauer, and Sertti. They would have had Linden, Leppanen, Lacka, Sellar, Mahshie, and Dubinsky up front. I think it’s safe to say that would have been a really good team.

They would have returned that entire blue line the following year as well, and the losses overall would have been minimal with only Alec Calvaruso, Shane Sellar, Billy Jerry, and Linden Marshall graduating. Everyone else would have been back. That 21-22 team with all the core pieces intact makes the NCAA tournament. Change my mind.

Then, you factor in that those teams being excellent would have helped recruiting a ton and added great prospects to the good prospects they had committed with Muzzatti, Smolinski, and Hunter McDonald all coming in 22-23, and it becomes pretty obvious that Coach Smith got absolutely screwed here. I don’t think you can find a coach in RPI’s history who got screwed more by the school. Ultimately, he couldn’t recover from such a huge blow, and Chris will break that down below in a bit.

While COVID was out of everyone’s control, the school’s response to it was unbelievable. No coach in the country got dealt a worse hand. Dave Smith had his program and team ripped to the ground, and yet, he never once complained publicly. He kept a positive attitude despite the neglect and mistreatment of the program and gave it his all to try to rebuild it through the portal and under the radar recruits. He was extremely passionate about the team, the program, and the RPI community. These qualities are what I’ll always remember about Dave Smith as RPI’s coach - the positivity, passion and dedication. And I’ll certainly always have that “what if” in the back of my head of what could have been had he had any support from the school. He did not deserve this outcome, and he deserved to be treated way better. I hope that at his next stop, he gets the support and results that he should have had at RPI.

Chris: I have been a fan of this program my entire life, and I witnessed nearly all of the Seth Appert era which concluded in 2017. Seth was charismatic, outgoing, and a skilled recruiter, who's up-and-down RPI career saw numerous peaks in the top 20 nationally. The 8-28 2017 team that lost him his job though was dreadful and had a litany of off the ice issues. You may be wondering why I am talking about the last firing and not the one that happened, well, yesterday, but I bring it up because the context is necessary.

RPI was scrutinized heavily by alumni and media for its handling of the 2017 men’s and women’s hirings, which was farmed out to Parker Executive Search. It resulted in 4 finalists: Ben Barr (now coach of #3 Maine), Bill Riga (now coach of #1 AH team Holy Cross), Dave Smith, and Ed Gosek. Media and alums were opining for RPI to hire Barr, the former Engineer whom they thought would restore the program to glory. But Barr in many ways was cut from the same cloth as Appert was when he was hired, they were both the young, star recruiter, first-time head coach archetype. With the ups and downs and tactical deficiencies under Appert, the school opted for the proven and safe commodity in Dave Smith. The hope was that his professionalism and experience would elevate the floor of the program, and it was viewed as a safe hire.

As Stephen noted, up until COVID it looked like a masterful move. The administration cut the legs out from under the program, but even in 21-22 the team was still highly competitive. Led by Ture Linden and Jake Johnson, they defeated Dartmouth at home and advanced to play Harvard in the quarterfinals. This to me, was the turning point and the first thing Smith’s staff had actual responsibility for in this decline. What do I mean by that you may ask? Harvard had 14 NHL draft picks including a lottery pick in 21-22. RPI fought hard and fell just a little short that Sunday night. That team embodied everything Dave Smith had been about up until then; they blocked shots, killed penalties, and didn’t give their opponents an inch of space.

But it was pretty clear this was about as good as the program could get employing this strategy, and that offseason they made some gambles to add skill and talent. They brought in Austin Heidemann, Brendan Budy, John Evans, and Nick Ardanaz, all of whom were touted for offensive ability. The trend continued over the next few years, with offensive first players like Dovar Tinling, Tyler Hotson, Arvils Bergmanis, and Will Gilson. The team has scored more specifically in the past two years, but defensive ability and penalty killing has plummeted since the 2022 team. Many of the players recognized last weekend on Senior Night had excellent careers, but it is also true that Smith had less success developing this group than he did with the crop of Linden, Kjellberg, and others.

I truly believe that the staff made a philosophical shift to add more skill to the roster, but RPI’s reputation nationally and/or their recruiting abilities did not allow them to find complete players in this transition. It was a reasonable gamble at the time to elevate the program, but the recruiting pipeline was probably not hot enough after COVID to support this plan. It resulted in the last few of Smith’s teams losing their tenacity and sound play that were such a joy to watch in the past. RPI’s drop from an 86% PK in 2020 and 87% in 2022 to just 69% the last two years shows the validity to my theory. Smith’s bread and butter when he was hired was that he ran a tight ship and disciplined teams, which is why I brought up the Appert history to explain why this was attractive to RPI back in 2017.

The bottom line is that the last three seasons have not been up to our standards as a program, and Dr. Bowers needed to spark something. There is no one party at blame here. The bottom line is that Dave Smith was not supported by the institution to the extent he was promised 8 years ago. He developed a strong, budding core and circumstances out of his control never allowed him to capitalize on it fully. But we are far enough away from COVID now where that excuse can’t be used for everything anymore, and the past three teams have not been good enough. It’s a disappointing story with a world of what-ifs. Dave was slighted, the fans suffered, and RPI once again finds itself having to put the pieces back together. It is IMPERATIVE that the institution supports the next head coach to the fullest extent, especially in today’s age of college sports. We would personally like to thank Coach Smith for all the support and time he has graciously given to our coverage of the team. We wish him the very best and are excited for this next chapter of RPI Hockey. Lets’ Go Red.