Exactly, it did happen split second. He sees him and turns at the last second, Wilson's already gliding in for the hit. He doesn't go high, he still manages to go shoulder to shoulder. When Wilson has actual bad hits, you have Caps fans wishing he'd quit that shit and just play hard, clean hockey like he can. Dude literally has 3 goals and 4 assists and is a +6 this week in 3 games on the top line.
He's certainly had his share of questionable hits, but the "narrative" IS league wide...and far too often, it's Tom Wilson is just a big, powerful dude, and every hit suddenly becomes dirty b/c too much man. There's a few on Blueshirt Banter who REEEE'd about this hit, and one guy with common sense pointing out that Smith turns too late for Wilson to react/stop the hit, and that if it was any other guy not named Wilson, probably nothing would be said about it at all (although I think if it was Ovechkin, you'd hear something too). That's just far too logical though. It's a hard hit, but it's not high, and it wouldn't look like anything if Smith isn't turning at the last second.
I agree with you absolutely that a lot of teams have a guy like this where you hate him if he's on an opposing team, love him if he's on yours. Matt Martin comes to mind. Don't compare Avery to Wilson though...Avery is of the Cooke breed, where they're not out there trying to land hard, clean hits that maybe are borderline. They do the underhanded dirty shit behind the play. Guys like Letang, and Hornqvist on the Pens fit this model, and even Crosby when he's in one of those moods. The big hitters like Martin/Wilson/etc are guys who aren't out there looking to intentionally injure people. They want them to hurt from the checks, but they want them to be legal hits. Now you throw that many hard hits right on the edge, you're going to have some bad ones, absolutely...but every big hit by him b/c he's big as fuck doesn't make it dirty.
