Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
Does anyone really think Treliving has the stones to demote Smith? They have been handling him with kid gloves all season like they are almost afraid to hurt his feelings. It's kind of a bizarre situation really the way this organization walks around on egg shells handling Smith. I'm sure he's a prideful guy but his NHL career is coming to an end and it's never pretty when it happens to competitive guys like Smith. The sooner this organization gets the balls to deal with this situation the sooner this team can move forward as right now he's the big question mark holding this team back.
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It's not a question of "balls", but of logistics. It's unlikely we can trade Smith right now, and demoting him creates a host of problems. Notably, Gilles is pretty much a non-factor at this point, while Parsons and Schneider have less than 40 pro games each. None of them could come up and expect to be effective as a back-up, and demoting Smith to the AHL locks one or both of the actual prospects in the ECHL.
Basically, we are stuck with Smith until the deadline and when the rosters expand. At this point, all we can do is hope that Rittich is a starter in this league, and that Smith can come in as the back-up and not hurt the team the way he did yesterday more often than not.