Confirmed with Link: Rangers Sign Brendan Smith (4 years x $4.35M)

[Pavel Buchnevich]

So we can be Colorado, Detroit, or Vancouver?

Those are the rebuilding teams in the NHL. Three garbage farm systems.

Yup, I'm fine taking that chance. Also a chance we might rebuild well.

 

[Machinehead]

Yup, I'm fine taking that chance. Also a chance we might rebuild well.

And what rebuilding team has "rebuilt well" without winning a draft lottery?

 

[Igor Shestyorkin]

puck possession is over rated?

Faceoffs don't always get you puck possession?

 

[Igor Shestyorkin]

Everyone looks at the championships but what about the rebuilds that have been massive failures?

Islanders, Panthers, Thrashers/Jets, Jackets, Avalanche, Sabres, Coyotes, Oilers (until the NHL stepped in and handed them McDavid only because this league doesn't have relegation) They've all been rebuilding for the better part of a decade and have gotten nowhere. And now Detroit looks like they're not coming out of theirs any time in the next decade. Vancouver? No roster talent, no plan, no direction, not even an impressive farm system. They're not a playoff team for another several years. Why? Because they're not even trying. To win in this league, you have to TRY to win. What a concept.

Sure, the Kings and Blackhawks ran into some high picks, but they never stopped trying to compete. The Hawks added Patrick Sharp, Andrew Ladd, and Martin Havlat in the middle of their rebuild. The Kings finished 15th and 14th in the West in 2008 and 2009, and those offseasons, still acquired Jarrett Stoll, Matt Greene, Ryan Smyth, and Justin Williams. Successful teams keep trying to succeed. They don't sit there and say "well we can't win the Cup so let's just be as bad as possible." That's never really worked.

It only worked for Pittsburgh and Edmonton because they drew lottery balls. You wanna sit around finishing last every year waiting for the NHL to fix a draft for us, be my guest, but I prefer winning. And who knows when the next generational talent is coming. Gonna be a fun 15 years.

Vancouver doesn't have an impressive farm system? I'd disagree with that notion, they definitely have talent. Though you're right that they have no roster talent(Minus two aging Sedins and an injury prone Tanev), which doesn't help their case.

Pettersson, Dahlen, Demko, Juolevi, Gaudette, Boeser, Goldobin, Lind, DiPietro, Palmu. That's pretty good right there in that little group, and you could include Stetcher possibly. I'm probably missing a couple of guys. Gadjovich? Don't know much on him but I know he was a 3rd round pick or something like that.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

And what rebuilding team has "rebuilt well" without winning a draft lottery?

Kings won a few Cups doing so.

Right now, the Canes are trending up. I like where Buffalo is, even if they suck because they have Eichel. Columbus did a pretty good job. Flyers didn't have the #1 pick, they are trending up. Jets are trending up.

 

[Alluckks]

Kings won a few Cups doing so.

Right now, the Canes are trending up. I like where Buffalo is, even if they suck because they have Eichel. Columbus did a pretty good job. Flyers didn't have the #1 pick, they are trending up. Jets are trending up.

Doughty 3rd overall, Schenn huge part of a trade 5th overall, Kopitar 11th overall, and this is while missing on a couple other high first round picks. After that you simply named teams that are "trending."

Winning a draft lottery doesn't imply #1. Drafting Top 5 is winning in my book. It is a lottery for quite a few picks.

 

[Machinehead]

Kings won a few Cups doing so.

Right now, the Canes are trending up. I like where Buffalo is, even if they suck because they have Eichel. Columbus did a pretty good job. Flyers didn't have the #1 pick, they are trending up. Jets are trending up.

The Kings won a few Cups continuing to bring in major pieces while they sucked. They signed Justin Williams after finishing dead last. They never tanked.

Trending up? You know what trending up is worth? Trending up and a metrocard gets you on the bus. Trending up is like halfway to where the Rangers are now, let alone teams that are winning championships.

We're you a Rangers fan from 1998-2004? I need to know if you understand what this fully entails.

 

[Alluckks]

Also, the Kings won it on crazy playoff runs as bottom seeds.

 

[Alluckks]

The Kings won a few Cups continuing to bring in major pieces while they sucked. They signed Justin Williams after finishing dead last. They never tanked.

Trending up? You know what trending up is worth? Trending up and a metrocard gets you on the bus. Trending up is like halfway to where the Rangers are now, let alone teams that are winning championships.

We're you a Rangers fan from 1998-2004? I need to know if you understand what this fully entails.

Trending up is what Islander fans tell me their team is doing every other year. That they have now eclipsed the Rangers and taken over New York, sure.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Doughty 3rd overall, Schenn huge part of a trade 5th overall, Kopitar 11th overall, and this is while missing on a couple other high first round picks. After that you simply named teams that are "trending."

Winning a draft lottery doesn't imply #1. Drafting Top 5 is winning in my book. It is a lottery for quite a few picks.

That wasn't what I was asked.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

We're you a Rangers fan from 1998-2004? I need to know if you understand what this fully entails.

No, I was too young, but I've been a fan of really bad teams. I'm not a bandwagoner.

 

[Machinehead]

No, I was too young, but I've been a fan of really bad teams. I'm not a bandwagoner.

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Don't call this iteration of the Rangers "mediocre" until you've really been through something hard. What you've seen is ****ing Candyland in comparison. Until you've lived a rebuild, you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Until then you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

You care more about the team being watchable than the team winning. Thats fine, many people think like that, but I don't. We differ on this topic.

A few bad seasons is not a big deal to me.

 

[Machinehead]

You care more about the team being watchable than the team winning. Thats fine, many people think like that, but I don't. We differ on this topic.

A few bad seasons is not a big deal to me.

I guess you weren't paying attention during the part where I said we won ****ing nothing as a result of all the draft picks we had.

Which is the result of 90% of rebuilds in the NHL, but everyone is obsessed with the fantasy of being Pittsburgh.

 

[Baemon Severson*]

I guess you weren't paying attention during the part where I said we won ****ing nothing as a result of all the draft picks we had.

Which is the result of 90% of rebuilds in the NHL, but everyone is obsessed with the fantasy of being Pittsburgh.

Heh this is funny to me as a Devils fan who enjoyed cup after cup as a youngin, but now that I'm older and have some disposable income, I get to spend it on a terrible team.

Buchnevich, I haven't seen my team in the playoffs since 2012 and likely won't for another couple of seasons. Things SEEM like they're turning around now but who knows really. Rebuilding can take an eternity and requires a ton of luck like Machinehead says. The Devils got into problems because they sold off their picks and they hadn't drafted anything worth a damn between 01-10 except for Parise, Zajac and Henrique. It's truly pathetic how bad it was. It seems like the Rangers are on the right path now seeing as they now have a couple of good prospects thanks to the draft, but you never know what will happen.

 

[mike14]

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Don't call this iteration of the Rangers "mediocre" until you've really been through something hard. What you've seen is ****ing Candyland in comparison. Until you've lived a rebuild, you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

WTF? The rebuild never even happened because of Jagr, Lundqvist and the lockout. 2006 was meant to be the first year of it after the 04 selloff that got shorted because of the lockout, rule changes, jar turning back the clock and Hank coming from nowhere. Straka, Nylander, Rozsival et al were 'place holders' who were meant to step aside for the kids (who never materialised, in part because we never bottomed out). 2005 (which never happened) and 2006 were meant to be the years were we picked in the top 5 and got our new core.
98-04 was never a rebuild (until the end), it was signing and trading for Lindros and Fleury and Holik and Messier and Nedved and Kovalev etc and consistently icing teams made up of past their prime veterans

 

[Stasis]

I'm so happy I've hit a level of fandom that is enjoyable and worthwhile at times while being completely irrelevant when needed. I guess it's like a religious person finding Jesus. Y'all need to get in on this action. Not Jesus. I don't care what anyone does with religion. This fandom. I'm a rangers fan for life. They win, I'm happy. They lose, it sucks. Same as all of us I guess. But I used to actually have my mood be negatively or positively affected directly by what the team did or did not do.

Something changed this past season. When we do something I think is good, Im happy. When we win, I'm happy. When we make a dumb move, lose stupidly, don't make it far? Oh well. There's next year. Or the next deadline. I care. But caring too much wasn't healthy.

I watched maybe 30 full games last season vs my usual 50-60. Felt great. Game is terrible? Turn it off, watch highlights. Or do something else with it on in the background. Game is awesome, tight, competitive... Focus and enjoy.

Nope. Didn't live the dark ages. I know that means I know nothing about real fandom for some of you (which is beyond silly and frankly, not worth the time to explain why) but I'm still a hardcore fan. We might be a great team this season and have a deep playoff run. We have an equal chance of being a bubble team that's a few injuries/poor performances away from missing the dance completely. Really could go either way. I'm not supposed to say that, I know. I'm so sorry. Rah rah rah! We can do it! We can win! Yep. We can. I'll love it. But we can easily miss the playoffs too. And I'm cool with that. There's always next year. Or the year after. Or 2025!

Personally I'm happy with the signing now. Could be a gamble, sure. But we have a solid guy who did well in our system with Skjei. They keep it up and it's gravy. They don't and we still did the right thing by taking a chance. Like we should have done with Stralman. If we had McD - Stralman, Skjei - Smith, Whoever - Bereglazov/DeAngelo right now, we'd be golden on D. Oh well.

Let's see what happens in the next week. It'll start to swing that needle towards playoff run or bubble/outsider. After that it's up to key player performances/development and injury luck. Or lack of.

Maybe I'll get to live some dark times and finally be a real fan who knows how to appreciate mediocre performances like a good boy. I don't like the taste of my tap water. But some ppl in other countries walk miles to find clean water. I feel for them. Wish I could do more. Still don't like my tap water. Just don't mind that it can be bad anymore. Can drink other things!

Welcome back Smith. Hope you do well again. Hope the whole team does!

 

[pld459666]

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Don't call this iteration of the Rangers "mediocre" until you've really been through something hard. What you've seen is ****ing Candyland in comparison. Until you've lived a rebuild, you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

I'm with you in everything you described above.

The one caveat is that Glen Sather was at the helm there and was not really rebuilding during that time. There were quite a few "marquee" acquisitions back then in an effort not to be bad "You can be a mouse or a lion" comment comes to mind.

Sathers drafting record before 2000 was suspect, he did nothing to change that until after the 05 lockout.

However, to your point, picking top 10 for 4-5 years generated bupkiss for this franchise.

It's a significant gamble.

 

[darko]

Genuinely surprised how many people on main boards hate this signing and think we massively overpaid.

 

[haohmaru]

Good, I don't want my team winning enough to get eliminated in the first or second round.

I want a lottery pick or I want us to be Cup contenders. This team is not good enough for the latter, so I prefer the former to being mediocre.

Plenty of lottery pick teams don't even make the playoffs much less being "Cup contenders". Lottery picks guarantee you nothing.

Everyone wants the cup. I get it. I also get that 95+% teams are failures every year if that's the measure by which being "good" is judged.

 

[Ail]

People get so hung up on how to build a winning team, and it's less about the how, and more about the who anyway. The best chance this team has had to win the 'Cup since the last time they won it was by magically selecting Lundqvist in the 7th round. I mean seriously, did anyone plan for that? Was getting a Hall of Fame bound goaltender part of a "rebuild" or "strategy" no, it was dumb luck with a small amount of foresight by one scout.

There is no right way to build a winning team, and the only wrong way to do it is by giving out bad contracts to guys who don't deserve them because they "bled blue" or whatever other superfluous ******** you want to try and quantify mediocre players who try really hard with. The bottom line is there's a lot of luck involved in winning, and the only thing you can hope for is that the GM puts the team in the best position to win when the opportunity is there.

 

[Amazing Kreiderman]

Every team that won the Cup in the last 10 seasons went through a rebuild, but not every team going through a rebuild won the Cup. A rebuild is not a guaranteed success and people need to realize there are more teams in the league.

This is the same as when people argue "The other team wanted it more" or "If we put in more effort we would have won it". It's a 1 team-POV. There are more factors

 

[Tawnos]

WTF? The rebuild never even happened because of Jagr, Lundqvist and the lockout. 2006 was meant to be the first year of it after the 04 selloff that got shorted because of the lockout, rule changes, jar turning back the clock and Hank coming from nowhere. Straka, Nylander, Rozsival et al were 'place holders' who were meant to step aside for the kids (who never materialised, in part because we never bottomed out). 2005 (which never happened) and 2006 were meant to be the years were we picked in the top 5 and got our new core.
98-04 was never a rebuild (until the end), it was signing and trading for Lindros and Fleury and Holik and Messier and Nedved and Kovalev etc and consistently icing teams made up of past their prime veterans

The Rangers never tanked to rebuild. After 2005 though, they did rebuild on the fly. It took 7 years because they started from absolutely nowhere. At the trade deadline in 2004, there were two decent prospects in the whole system. Lundqvist and Tyutin. We tried to hang our hats on Falardeau. Gross.

From the deadline in 2004 until 2012, the only time we dealt a young player or promising prospect for anything other than another young player or promising prospect was when we dealt Prucha in the deal for Derek Morris. The writing was on the wall for him anyway. We didn't trade a single 1st round pick. We traded I think one 2nd round pick.

Meanwhile, we made the playoffs almost every year and created some great memories. Eliminating the Devils in their own building to the sound of cheers. Sweeping the Thrashers. Rozy OT. Yeah, there was heartbreak too. But it was a hell of a lot better than the junk we saw for the 8 years prior. So maybe it took l onger to get into contention than it might have. The sacrifice was worth it.

If it's a choice between what happened 2005-2012 and risking a situation like what the Panthers have gone through, I choose the first one, even if it means risking not winning a Cup in the next window again. It shouldn't take nearly as long to get back because the team is full of youth even now.

 

[SA16]

Tanking is not a good strategy in the NHL with the new draft lottery format.

Tanking works in the NBA (even with a lottery) since you basically cannot win without a mega elite player since one player had such a huge impact. And it can work in the NFL because of how quickly you can turn over the entire roster and the need to get yourself a tip flight qb.

It's not very effective in a league where even if you finish in dead last you still have a very reasonable chance to end up 4th ovr and where one player cannot completely make a team like a basketball player or a qb. Obvious exception being like a McDavid Eichel draft but that's an outlier and again with the new format nothing is guaranteed,

Long story short - don't tank. Try to win.

 

[Mac n Gs]

You didn't want to quote me twice in the same day?

And he is just as bad offensively as Staal. For their careers, they both have a .23PPG average. Smith is at .229, Staal at .226, but thats barely any difference. They are essentially the same at producing points.

And I'm not saying Staal is as good as Smith, but in terms of offense, Smith is as bad as Staal.

Being able to skate and exit the zone is great, but we don't need to be paying Smith what we did because he can do that better than Staal who probably is one of the worst at that in the NHL.

Didn't want to embarrass you

Again, I still think it's ludicrous to say he's as bad offensively as Staal. I know he hasn't historically put up offense at the NHL level, but I'll give the guy some credit for coming in here and putting up 8 in 30. I'm not even expecting him to put up 30 points, I'll take 20 and leave it. What he does on defense far outweighs what we need from him offensively.

Now back to the main point, I'm still wondering how you can actually think he's as bad offensively as someone who literally had numerous plays just die on their stick at the left point because they couldn't handle a simple pass, how many shots he just fired aimlessly at the net that had no chance of going in, and how he can barely pass since his vision is damaged. Staal had 10 points this year and 0 in the playoffs. There aren't many defenseman who are currently as bad offensively as Marc Staal (and no, Smith isn't one). Staal's only saving grace right now is that he can defend one-on-ones still decently enough and can PK. This isn't pre-injury Staal we're talking about who actually appeared to have some decent offensive potential.