Speculation: Player Discussion: Will Smith

[Zarzh]

Moving him to wing but keeping him on the 3rd line makes me think they don't know what to do with him -- and that's the charitable interpretation.

I don't think Warso knows how to develop anyone and seems to be struggling to put players in positions to succeed.

 

[Hodge]

Insisting on keeping the Lund line together seems really dumb. Those guys should be playing with Celebrini and Smith. Winning games shouldn't be the #1 priority.

 

[coooldude]

I don't think Warso knows how to develop anyone and seems to be struggling to put players in positions to succeed.

Counterpoint, Thrun, Thompson, Eklund, Zetterlund, and Celebrini all having good starts for their expectation, are developing, and are being put in a position to succeed. Smith is the difficult case.

 

[Gecklund]

I don't think Warso knows how to develop anyone and seems to be struggling to put players in positions to succeed.

Smith isn’t NHL ready and people who watched him in college has said that all summer. Nothing Warsofsky can do here.

Warsofsky coached Forsling, Lorentz, Luostarinen, Geekie, Bean, Nedeljkovic, Forsberg, Evangelista, Jeannot, Jarvis, Novak, Carrier, Ingram, Noesen, Drury, Chatfield, Lyon, Kotchetkov before coming to the NHL. This is a bunch of varying levels of NHLers that he helped develop to varying degrees.

 

[Zarzh]

Counterpoint, Thrun, Thompson, Eklund, Zetterlund, and Celebrini all having good starts for their expectation, are developing, and are being put in a position to succeed. Smith is the difficult case.

Celebrini is a can't miss player and Eklund is around expectations. Zetterlund was played poorly for the first 6 or 7 games before being returned to what worked last season. The defensemen have had some success in limited minutes.

 

[coooldude]

Celebrini is a can't miss player and Eklund is around expectations. Zetterlund was played poorly for the first 6 or 7 games before being returned to what worked last season. The defensemen have had some success in limited minutes.

You're telling me you couldn't imagine a world in which Celebrini, Eklund, and Zetterlund are put in worse situations that hurt them? And you're telling me Zetterlund had a bad start to the season as opposed to a bad stretch in the middle? Have you been watching him play?

There's a contingent of our community that is very prone to "no true Scotsman"/moving the goalposts logic as it relates to our coaches over the years. This is one good example.

And I'm not even happy with how they're handling Smith, although I don't think the coach is the magical key to Smith figuring it out. 80-90% is on him and 10-20% on coaching decisions right now.

 

[Zarzh]

Smith isn’t NHL ready and people who watched him in college has said that all summer. Nothing Warsofsky can do here.

Warsofsky coached Forsling, Lorentz, Luostarinen, Geekie, Bean, Nedeljkovic, Forsberg, Evangelista, Jeannot, Jarvis, Novak, Carrier, Ingram, Noesen, Drury, Chatfield, Lyon, Kotchetkov before coming to the NHL. This is a bunch of varying levels of NHLers that he helped develop to varying degrees.

Bolded played less than 30 games for him and many less than 20 so you have to argue his off-ice impact which is more challenging, many of these players are goalies which he has less impact for. You can make a case that he can improve defense in defensemen.

You're telling me you couldn't imagine a world in which Celebrini, Eklund, and Zetterlund are put in worse situations that hurt them? And you're telling me Zetterlund had a bad start to the season as opposed to a bad stretch in the middle? Have you been watching him play?

Zetterlund was played with Kostin for a significant part of the season which is the worst situation imaginable. Eklund and Celebrini are difficult players to put in bad situations.

 

[coooldude]

Bolded played less than 30 games for him and many less than 20 so you have to argue his off-ice impact which is more challenging, many of these players are goalies which he has less impact for. You can make a case that he can improve defense in defensemen.

Zetterlund was played with Kostin for a significant part of the season which is the worst situation imaginable. Eklund and Celebrini are difficult players to put in bad situations.

Keep moving those goalposts man.

1,000 ways to be a bad coach and the only way to be a good coach is your exact line combinations that they haven't tried, right?

 

[Gecklund]

Bolded played less than 30 games for him and many less than 20 so you have to argue his off-ice impact which is more challenging, many of these players are goalies which he has less impact for. You can make a case that he can improve defense in defensemen.

Zetterlund was played with Kostin for a significant part of the season which is the worst situation imaginable. Eklund and Celebrini are difficult players to put in bad situations.

Okay so you have 5 out of the 15 I listed. Like I get it. Everyone wants to blame Warsofsky for Smith’s struggles instead of the shiny prospect. Smith will be fine. He hasn’t even played half a season (which is generally when things start clicking for rookies that aren’t the best of the best like a Macklin, Bedard, Michkov, etc).

 

[Sendhelplease]

Am I the only one who has been perfectly fine with how Smith has played this season? He has been improving each and every game and has shown the flashes you would like to see out of a teenager in his first 13 games. I expected him to struggle early and he has but he has been improving a lot both with and without the puck. He is playing without Leonard and Perrault for the first time in 2 years and is adjusting to the hardest league in the world, he has done perfectly fine and I have been happy with how the team is developing him.

 

[Gecklund]

Am I the only one who has been perfectly fine with how Smith has played this season? He has been improving each and every game and has shown the flashes you would like to see out of a teenager in his first 13 games. I expected him to struggle early and he has but he has been improving a lot both with and without the puck. He is playing without Leonard and Perrault for the first time in 2 years and is adjusting to the hardest league in the world, he has done perfectly fine and I have been happy with how the team is developing him.

I mean I agree. I think he’s played fine. I think Macklin coming in at the same time has been not great for him. People are comparing them and saying why is Will Smith not playing better?!?

 

[Alaskanice]

Am I the only one who has been perfectly fine with how Smith has played this season? He has been improving each and every game and has shown the flashes you would like to see out of a teenager in his first 13 games. I expected him to struggle early and he has but he has been improving a lot both with and without the puck. He is playing without Leonard and Perrault for the first time in 2 years and is adjusting to the hardest league in the world, he has done perfectly fine and I have been happy with how the team is developing him.

You may feel alone in your opinion, I know the feeling, I concur with your thought. Will Smith is growing into an NHL player and the team is doing the right thing. Yes, I’m conforming to their authority.

 

[BaileyMacTavish]

Am I the only one who has been perfectly fine with how Smith has played this season? He has been improving each and every game and has shown the flashes you would like to see out of a teenager in his first 13 games. I expected him to struggle early and he has but he has been improving a lot both with and without the puck. He is playing without Leonard and Perrault for the first time in 2 years and is adjusting to the hardest league in the world, he has done perfectly fine and I have been happy with how the team is developing him.

Probably. He's been okay, but I was just hoping for more.

 

[Hodge]

Am I the only one who has been perfectly fine with how Smith has played this season? He has been improving each and every game and has shown the flashes you would like to see out of a teenager in his first 13 games. I expected him to struggle early and he has but he has been improving a lot both with and without the puck. He is playing without Leonard and Perrault for the first time in 2 years and is adjusting to the hardest league in the world, he has done perfectly fine and I have been happy with how the team is developing him.

I don't know if Smith has been improving every game but I agree he's been fine for a 19 year old. I also think it's time to give him better linemates now that Mack is back. Seems like that was the original plan anyway considering we played him with Granlund and Zetts in the opener.

 

[Herschel]

Moving him to wing but keeping him on the 3rd line makes me think they don't know what to do with him -- and that's the charitable interpretation.

The move to wing could be to work on specific areas of the game. As an example, wingers tend to be engaged directly in board battles whereas the centre is often in a support position.

It could also be to lessen Smith's defensive responsibilities for a few nights.

Lots of development reasons to have him play wing.

 

[Zarzh]

Keep moving those goalposts man.

1,000 ways to be a bad coach and the only way to be a good coach is your exact line combinations that they haven't tried, right?

I mean yeah, the two easy ways to be a bad coach is stacking a top line in a development year and trying to force a square peg into a round hole in terms of player roles as he did last game with Smith.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Am I the only one who has been perfectly fine with how Smith has played this season? He has been improving each and every game and has shown the flashes you would like to see out of a teenager in his first 13 games. I expected him to struggle early and he has but he has been improving a lot both with and without the puck. He is playing without Leonard and Perrault for the first time in 2 years and is adjusting to the hardest league in the world, he has done perfectly fine and I have been happy with how the team is developing him.

I'm not fine with how Smith has played but I'm fine with them prioritizing his development at the NHL level even when he's pretty evidently not an NHL caliber player yet. His improvements have been slight and detail-oriented which is good but not yet leading to much of an impact to help the team win games.

 

[fasterthanlight]

Random question: there seems to be some worry that the sharks are harming the development of Smith by...

- playing him in the NHL
- playing him with the wrong linemates
- playing him at wing vs. center
- not building his confidence by giving him more PP time
- having development days when he has a good game
- ...+

Is there evidence that these various choices might matter in the long term?

 

[zombie kopitar]

I mean yeah, the two easy ways to be a bad coach is stacking a top line in a development year and trying to force a square peg into a round hole in terms of player roles as he did last game with Smith.

Everything fits in the square hole bro

 

[hohosaregood]

I feel like Will's been using his skating more recently. He's been a little harder on the puck carrier. Although, he still needs to get stronger to pick up some more burst though. And I think experience is the best way for him to figure out how to deal with board battles. He's obviously not strong enough to win with muscle but he hasn't figured out how to use his finesse to slip away from checks or using his body positioning to hold the puck away from pressure.

And I don't really mind the move to wing right now from a development perspective. He's going to rotate positioning a bunch at this level and it'd be good for him to understand the wing's role throughout the game. Just hope he's back to center for 80% of games.

 

[timorous me]

The move to wing could be to work on specific areas of the game. As an example, wingers tend to be engaged directly in board battles whereas the centre is often in a support position.

It could also be to lessen Smith's defensive responsibilities for a few nights.

Lots of development reasons to have him play wing.

Yeah, I think it could be fine for him to play on the wing for a stretch, but I just wonder if it was actually a well-thought-out plan considering how things played out the past few days.

First we had him practicing in the top 6 at center. Then he takes the next day/game off for development. Then he comes back in at wing the next day (no practice), though maybe they were going to sit Celebrini (and he'd have played center) but they decided against that, so he stayed at wing, and the coach's explanation was just that they liked how the other centers on the team were performing (which honestly shouldn't be much of a factor in the consideration of a developing player on a developing team when the centers in question are veterans except for Macklin).

So yeah, it's fine, but I still have some questions about the process of it all.

 

[wickedwitch]

Random question: there seems to be some worry that the sharks are harming the development of Smith by...

- playing him in the NHL
- playing him with the wrong linemates
- playing him at wing vs. center
- not building his confidence by giving him more PP time
- having development days when he has a good game
- ...+

Is there evidence that these various choices might matter in the long term?

First, I like the development days. (I did complain, but that was me joking about my priorities because a game was being played at a reasonable time for me.) And I don't think a couple games with mediocre linemates or playing on the wing will make a difference. My concern is that we will see a season (or more) of Smith with mediocre linemates. And arguably nothing is more important than building a young player's confidence, so I want to see him with more PP time too.

My opinion is that in most cases it's hard to distinguish bad drafting from bad player development. Even if a player later switches teams, it's hard to know if long-term damage had been done by their development. I think bad drafting gets a disproportionate amount of blame, but I can't really prove it either.

But there are the exceptions. Dylan Strome is an obvious one. I think by now most would agree that the Coyotes screwed up his development. And while it didn't cause permanent damage, it took him many more years (and more teams) to reach the level he was capable of reaching. Even less than two years ago, after a 60+ season, Strome was used as a cautionary tale as to why a team might not want to draft Smith.

Now, some players will be more resilient to bad development. But that doesn't mean that they are inherently better than players that need more specialized development. And I worry, partially because of his similarities to Strome, that Smith will need more help developing and that he won't get it with the Sharks.

 

[TheBeard]

Random question: there seems to be some worry that the sharks are harming the development of Smith by...

- playing him in the NHL
- playing him with the wrong linemates
- playing him at wing vs. center
- not building his confidence by giving him more PP time
- having development days when he has a good game
- ...+

Is there evidence that these various choices might matter in the long term?

I mean no one knows until it’s too late. The fact of the matter is the coaches are the ones that see him every day, talk to him, read his body language and communicate with him. We’re just a bunch of know-it-alls with no insight whatsoever.