Beaten by the Ugly Stick

Oilers left wing Ryan Smyth doesn’t shoot hard.

“He has a horrible shot and a terrible stick,” teammate Ethan Moreau said. “You watch him in practice, and sometimes he winds up and takes a slap shot and my 5-year-old can shoot better.”

His shot is so slow, it would lose a race against a tortoise.

“At times, you can see [Commissioner] Gary Bettman’s name on the puck when he shoots it,” Oilers Coach Craig MacTavish said, laughing.

Oilers defenseman Chris Pronger called Smyth’s shot “a muffin” and added, “I don’t know how they go in, but they go in.”

The puck usually takes a slow, circuitous route after leaving Smyth’s stick, most often hitting a shin or pad, but finds its way over the goal line at crucial moments. Rarely has there been a more fortuitous example than the goal Smyth scored Saturday to give Edmonton a 2-1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes and a chance to tie the Stanley Cup finals at two games each tonight at Rexall Place.

“Yeah, I’m not the flashiest player, that’s for sure,” said Smyth, who pronounces his name “Smith.”

“Everybody knows my style. I get a lot of those goals.”

His ugly goal on Saturday was a thing of beauty to the Oilers. They’d carried much of the play and nursed a one-goal lead for more than 40 minutes, until Rod Brind’Amour tied it at 9:09 of the third period. They couldn’t let Carolina take a 3-0 series lead and so became smartly aggressive.

Smyth started the decisive play by passing the puck back to Ales Hemsky and heading to the crease in anticipation of a chance at a rebound or tip-in. Carolina goaltender Cam Ward stopped Hemsky’s long shot but couldn’t hold it; Ward and Smyth swatted at the puck simultaneously, sending it spinning aloft. Smyth thought it deflected off the crest on his jersey before it eluded a helpless Ward at 17:45.

“I’ve done it since I was in juniors, driving the net. You know, the puck’s got to end up there,” Smyth said. “The thing with traffic, screening the goaltender or trying to get him off his game or make him look around me, is a little distraction in that area. That’s how I’ve made my living, and if it helps the team, great.”

Teammate Michael Peca compared Smyth to a basketball power forward who invites contact and absorbs bruises while scoring.

“They get a lot of points in the paint, and he gets a lot of his around the paint,” Peca said. “Guys like that are hard to come by nowadays. A lot of guys like to score from the perimeter, and with goalies as good as they are, you’ve got to get in those tough areas, and he’s got a knack of doing that.”

Although the Hurricanes contended Smyth had interfered with Ward, the goalie said his only regret was letting the rebound of Hemsky’s shot pop away from him.

“With the new rules in the league, it’s tough to know what you can do to move the player out from in front of the net,” Ward said Sunday, after the Hurricanes practiced at Rexall Place.

“So maybe now the smaller guys have the same advantage as the big guys.”

Sturdy but hardly herculean at 6 feet 1 and 190 pounds, Smyth has scored 234 goals in 717 NHL games -- all with the Oilers -- and 21 goals in 64 playoff games. He has won world junior, Olympic and World Cup titles with Team Canada and has represented his homeland a national-record 60 times at the world championships, serving as “Captain Canada” in five tournaments.

He would have worn the maple leaf again this spring if he hadn’t been busy flanking Hemsky and Shawn Horcoff while leading the Oilers to upsets of the Red Wings, Sharks and Mighty Ducks to get into the Cup finals.

“Playing for your country is quite an honor,” he said, “but winning the Stanley Cup would be another feather in the cap.”

Winning it with an Oilers team that’s still in Edmonton would make it even sweeter for Smyth. With 10 seasons’ experience, he’s the team’s longest-serving player and a survivor of the era when shaky finances jeopardized the franchise’s future.

New ownership and a labor agreement that included a salary cap and revenue sharing allowed the Oilers to add talented players such as Peca, Pronger and Dwayne Roloson and advance to the Cup finals for the first time since 1990.

“We were recognized as a small-market team, a team that works hard but squeaks into the playoffs and gets to the second round, maybe,” Smyth said. “Now, we can compete.”