Former San Jose Sharks center Mark Smith plays with his band, the Vinyl Trees, Thursday at the Bargetto Winery in Soquel.

SOQUEL — Mark Smith is all grown up.

Tuning his mandolin and setting up microphones for his evening show at the Bargetto Winery in Soquel Thursday, Mark Smith — better known to San Jose Sharks fans as simply ‘Smitty’ — hardly resembled the player fans had come to love during his six years with the team.

Gone is the teal-and-purple-dyed Mohawk he once proudly sported. Gone is the mean streak that earned him 97 penalty minutes one season. Gone is the blue-collar, tough-as-nails fourth-line center who earned his way into the NHL with more black eyes and bruises than goals and assists.

In its place, a chilled-out 30-year-old has emerged, as interested in tuning his didgeridoo as in properly executing the left-wing lock.

Always a head-banger type on the ice, Smith is a different man away from it. Thursday night, Smith and his band, the Vinyl Trees, played a two-hour set at the Soquel winery that showcased the other Smitty — the brown, mop-top hairdo-sporting, nice-to-meet-ya type of guy any nice girl would be proud to introduce to her parents.

“I had a kid, you know,” he said, chuckling. “I’m getting older. I had to farm the hair out a little bit and find my natural color.”

This is the new Smitty — the version 2.0 Smitty. And it’s who he wants to be now.

“I think moving to California and being in the lifestyle and the surroundings, you kind of take that on yourself,” he said behind a pair of red-rimmed sunglasses. “It impacted me in a big way. I’ve always liked the acoustic guitar and being able to just take off and go to the beach and play. But yeah, it definitely contradicts the way I play the game of hockey.”

The Sharks drafted Smith in 1997 as a 19-year-old out of Eyebrow, Saskatchewan. He made his NHL debut with San Jose in 2000, and spent six seasons with the team, not counting the cancelled 2004-05 season. In the 2005-06 season, he set career highs in goals (nine), points (24) and, more memorably, perhaps, penalty minutes. But he was released from the team in 2007, and spent last year mostly on the bench or in the trainer’s room with the Calgary Flames.

“Pretty much my job was to go out there and fight,” he said of his most recent stint with the hated Flames. “That’s really not a role I want to do, especially down the stretch of my hockey career. I’ve always been a guy that, you know, if I need to throw down the mitts and put someone in their place, I won’t think twice about it. But it’s not something I like to do, just go out there and look for fights. It’s really not enjoyable getting punched in the face every night.”

Smith speaks with mixed emotions about playing for his almost-hometown Flames. He saw his production slip dramatically in Calgary last season, as he scored only one goal the whole year (against the Sharks, naturally). He didn’t set foot on the ice during the Stanley Cup playoffs, and was far removed from the easy going, coastal atmosphere he came to embrace while living in the Bay Area.

A late-season neck injury (courtesy of Minnesota enforcer Derek Boogaard) sidelined Smith for the final month of the season, which, if nothing else, gave him extra time to focus on his music.

“It was kind of nice to go to Calgary, where I didn’t know too many people and I could just take myself away from everything and just concentrate on writing,” he said. “But I think just being in the cold and the snow and the dismal weather gave a lot of my songs a little darker feel. We’ll see how they go over in sunny California.”

Right after the season ended in April, Smith and his wife, who have a home in San Jose, gave birth to their first child, a baby girl named Camila. Becoming a father, Smith said, has changed his outlook on life.

“It’s been unbelievable,” he said. “She’s just the best thing that’s ever happened to my life. It almost seems like my life’s been absolutely meaningless until this point, and now this is why I’m here; to look after this other life.”

Now Smith stands at an interesting moment in his career: He’s by no means an old man, but he isn’t that young anymore. The Flames didn’t renew his contract after the season, so at the moment Smith is unemployed. He’s still recovering from the neck injury, and said he’s unsure where he’ll land next season. But now that all takes a back seat. While hockey has been good to Smith (the music career’s not paying the bills just yet), he’s finding that being a well-rounded person has its rewards, too.

“You know, I write a lot of songs based around that whole (idea) of just one day finding something to blow your mind and just alter your whole life,” he said. “I find a lot of my writing kind of stems into that.”

So which is it — Mark Smith, the philosopher, or Mark Smith, the brawler?

It doesn’t matter to him. You can just call him Smitty.



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