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Ben Smith Inducted Into IIHF Hall of Fame

By USA Hockey, 05/22/16, 5:15AM MDT

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Four-Time Olympic Coach Led U.S. Women To Gold at 1998 Olympics

MOSCOW -- Ben Smith, who was the head coach of three U.S. Olympic Women's Ice Hockey Teams, including the 1998 squad that captured the first-ever gold medal awarded in the Olympic Winter Games in women's ice hockey, was formally inducted into the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame here today.

Smith, who has been part of four U.S. Olympic coaching staffs total in his career, including as an assistant for the 1988 U.S. Olympic Men's Ice Hockey Team, continues to widely involved in player evaluation for USA Hockey.

He was hired as the first full-time women's national team coach by USA Hockey in 1996 and helped establish the U.S. women's program as a pre-dominant world power over his 10-year run.

"Ben has had a remarkable career and is so very deserving of this honor," said Dave Ogrean, executive director of USA Hockey. "We couldn't be more pleased for him and all the honorees in this year's class."

Other members of the IIHF Hall of Fame Class of 2016 include players Peter Bondra, Sergei Fedorov, Valeri Kamenski, Ville Peltonen and builder Pat Quinn.

The IIHF bio on Ben Smith is below:

The son of a U.S. Senator, Ben Smith III was a fine hockey player in his own right, playing three years of college hockey at Harvard under Cooney Weiland, a Hall of Famer from his days with the Boston Bruins, before embarking on a coaching career that would endure until his retirement.

Smith graduated in 1968 and wasted no time making the transition from player to coach. Just a few months after attending his final class he was hired as an assistant at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and also coached a local high-school team in his hometown in Gloucester, a small fishing town.

Smith’s first full-time head coaching job was at Yale, but after five rewarding years he left to take an assistant position under Jack Parker at Boston University. Smith stayed with BU for nine years, including a championship 1989/90 season, and he later made his way around top schools, coaching at Dartmouth for a year and Northeastern for five in the 1980s and into the 1990s.

His first international opportunity came when he took a year off to work as an assistant coach for the U.S. men’s team for the 1988 Olympics in Calgary.

In 1996, Smith gave up men’s hockey and college hockey to coach the women’s national team, becoming the first full-time coach employed by USA Hockey. Over the course of the next ten years he experienced the highs and lows in a game in which the Canada-United States rivalry produced tears of both joy and disappointment.

Canada won the 1997 Women’s World Championship, its fourth straight title at the expense of the Americans, and it was Canada that was favoured to win gold heading into the first Olympics with women’s hockey. But Nagano in 1998 proved to be Smith’s crowning glory as the Americans stunned Canada twice in three days.

First, Smith’s team scored an unprecedented six goals in the third period to win the final game of the round robin, 7-4, and three days later the team played a flawless game, winning 3-1 against their northern rivals and claiming the historic gold.

Canada continued to dominate the Women’s Worlds, however, confounding Smith in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2004. As well, Canada turned the tables on the Americans at the 2002 Olympics, winning gold in stunning fashion. In 2005, however, the U.S. played a perfect gold-medal game, beating Canada 1-0 in a shootout for its first ever Women’s World Championship gold medal. Smith ended his career a year later after a bronze at the 2006 Olympics in Turin.

Smith’s greatest assets as a coach were his ability to teach the game with x’s and o’s but also to adopt the right temperament for the women’s game. He often spoke in riddles, and he was never one to scream and shout to motivate. Instead, his ability to handle different personalities was a skill few coaches possess.