Blackhawks assistant coach Barry Smith will leave his role behind the bench and return to the front office as Director of Player Evaluation after the NHL All-Star break, reports Chris Kuc of The Athletic.
Smith has been an assistant coach for more than 30 years and won five Stanley Cups: two with Pittsburgh in the 1990s and three more with Detroit between 1997 and 2002. Scotty Bowman, the Blackhawks senior advisor for hockey operations and father of general manager Stan Bowman, was the head coach for those Detroit teams.
Smith was the source of one of the more well-known incidents between Quenneville and the younger Bowman in 2012.