Leetch3
Registered User
- Jul 14, 2009
- 12,994
- 10,859
staal was one of the worst players in the league last year by pretty much any metric so take your pick there.
smith played right wing for 80 percent of the year. You think there wasn’t a better player in Hartford?
smith playing forward though had nothing to do with his ability as a forward IMO and was all about dressing a 7th dman to insulate fox from the pk as a rookie (he'll kill penalties this year)...smith was only moved back to the blueline after Hajek failed to take the spot and we traded Skjei. it was only when we had no options that smith was moved back to the blueline...
and as far as staal goes...he was scratched early in the year. he got back in after Hajek didn't play well and get sent back down...Rykov was hurt and never really recovered. so who was going to bump staal from the lineup? crawley? sean day? He played due to lack of options and depth...if the team actually thought he was still good they wouldn't have paid a 2nd round pick to get rid of him.