Oilersnation is reviving the Top 100 Edmonton Oilers of All Time list, a project originally created by the late Robin Brownlee in 2015. Jason Smith comes in at No. 27 on our updated 2025 list. He was ranked No. 20 on Brownlee’s original list.

Jason Smith was not the flashiest of players. In fact, flash was probably the least thing you could expect from him. But Gator was a tough, gritty stay-at-home defenceman, who never shied away from blocking shots, throwing hits and filling in the odd opponent when neccesary.

“I’m just going to try and bring a solid defensive game to this team… Go out and play as hard as I can every game,” he told Robin Brownlee upon the Oilers’ acquisition of him in 1999.

Notable

At the beginning of his third season with the Oilers, he was named the 11th captain in franchise history. As a player who exuded leadership qualities on and off the ice, he was the obvious candidate for the position.

“He’s the ultimate walk-softly-carry-the-big-stick guy,” former head coach Craig MacTavish told Joanne Ireland of the Edmonton Journal. “He embodies all the characteristics we as an organization and as a coaching staff deem important for leadership.”

Ireland wrote, “Smith, in his third season as an Oiler, his eighth in the league, throws punches, he doesn’t pull them, which is why so many of his teammates were applauding the coach’s selection.”

His captaincy made a lot of sense to everyone in the organization. Former Oilers alternate-captain Mike Grier told Ireland that Smith was always the lead candidate for the vacant captaincy.

“He’s got everyone’s respect already,” Grier told her. “He puts his body and his heart on the line every night. It’s just a great example for everyone in the room to play as hard as he does.”

In 2006, he captained the underdog Oilers team to the Stanley Cup final. This run was known as a Cinderella story as the Oilers climbed from barely making the playoffs to the second closest team to winning it all.

He held his captaincy for five seasons, which tied Wayne Gretzky for the longest tenure as an Oilers captain in franchise history. A record that has only been beaten by Connor McDavid, who is the current captain of the Oilers and has held that position for 10 seasons and counting.

The Story

Smith was drafted 18th overall by the New Jersey Devils, where he played 164 games with the club, recording three goals and 11 points. He was then a part of the trade that sent the Toronto Maple Leafs star Doug Gilmour to the Devils, and he played 162 games in Toronto before his time in Edmonton began.

The Oilers received a fourth-round pick in the 1999 draft and a second-round pick in the 2000 draft, and Smith found a long-term home in the league with the Oilers. He played 542 games in Edmonton, scoring 31 goals and 113 points as the team’s best and most fearless stay-at-home defenceman whose leadership led them all the way to the Stanley Cup Final in 2006.

On July 1, 2007, he was traded by the Oilers alongside Joffrey Lupul to the Philadelphia Flyers for a third-round draft pick in 2009, Joni Pitkänen and Geoff Sanderson. He played the 2007-08 season in Philly before moving on to the Ottawa Senators to cap off his career with one season in Canada’s capital.

His 65 career hits were highlighted by the 2000-01 season, which was his first as a captain, where he dropped the gloves ten times, according to HockeyFights.

After a long and physical career, his body had suffered plenty of injuries, including multiple concussions. This lead to his official retirement on September 2, 2009.

Edmonton Journal Newspaper Clipping From July 2, 2007.

What Brownlee said

Jason Smith was tough as nails and mean as hell and he had the pain threshold of a cadaver. Smith had the biggest heart and the ugliest feet I have ever seen in a National Hockey League dressing room, and if there was a record kept for the number of ice bags a player has had strapped to broken, torn and bruised body parts over the course of a career, Smith would surely hold it.
Smith was a combination of Dirty Harry and Anton Chigurh with a bit of Arnold Schwarzenegger thrown in. More than anything, Smith, the longest-serving captain in the history of the Edmonton Oilers with 542 regular season games and 45 more in the playoffs on his resume, was a leader of men who was willing to do anything to win without making a big look-at-me fuss. If that meant punching somebody’s teeth down their throat or chasing down opponents while hobbling on a busted foot or a shot-up knee, the man teammates called Gator was up for it.