Quoting: Xqb15a
Yeah that was not suppose to be physical it was suppose to be about his production (sorry). He isn’t a top 6 player, He doesn’t take face offs, the majority of his starts are in the offensive zone, and maybe most importantly he doesn’t produce in the playoffs, I mean literally the last 4 playoffs 0,1,5,0 points. Way better ways to spend $3.1M.
He isnt supposed to be a top 6 player. I think 3RW is a good spot for him.
His oZS% was 51.9%, pretty much even
Playoff production history for depth players isnt as important as it is for star players + goalies imo. Each year is usually such a small sample size and it varies a lot year to year - look at Kadri in TOR - the narrative was that he could never be a playoff performer and would always get suspended and now hes scoring over a point per game in the postseason in COL. A lot of UFAs this year actually have poor histories of playoff production: Trocheck, Rust, Jarnkrok, Domi, Mikheyev, Niederreiter, Copp, etc (with some of them actually producing this year which just shows how playoff production varies)
There are definitely other ways to spend that $ (probably better ways tbh) but I dont think Smith is a bad option at all