If anything I think the mistake the team is making with Smith is not giving him PP1 time, he needs those reps and that is where he is most likely to find his groove early on, it is hard to justify playing him there over any one of Toffoli, Granlund, Zetterlund or Eklund but I have maintained that his development is far more important than wins this season so they should definitely have him up there
I did manage to catch most of the 2nd half of the game and Smith just gets incrementally better every game, he's coming along, it's just going to take time some fans aren't willing to wait for because we wasted 3 years postponing the rebuild so we're all tired of losing but this is for the best
If there is any one thing to single out about him as a glaring negative it is that he isn't just easily muscled off the puck, he loses possession and gets stripped and falls over at the slightest hint of contact, and that just won't fly in this league, but that's one of his hard-learned lessons this year and over next offseason he'll have to commit to his physical conditioning, he's already way bigger this year than he was last year so I believe he can do it