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Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan
OR, now just hear me out for a minute, he is trying to maintain a positive approach and ignore negative stories like this one.
Put yourself in Smith's shoes for a second. Ok, so you're career is winding down and you had a really rough stretch earlier this year, so much so that you lost your starting job for a significant duration of time. That's a significant shot to a player's confidence, especially one who rides on confidence as much as Smith seems to. You can see the difference in his play from when he's confident to when he's not. I would wager that Sigalet's job is to maintain his confidence as much as possible so he plays better. All players are affected by a lack of confidence to varying degrees, Smith just seems to be affected by it more than most.
So he creates a narrative that isn't 100% truthful, but it helps him to maintain some steady play in net rather than completely crap the bed. So be it. It makes no difference how he gets there, as long as he plays okay.
Citation please? I cannot remember any significant instances where Smith blames everything on the other players. He may describe what happened in the game appropriately, but no more so than any sports writer would characterize what happened. This is a narrative that Coyotes fans have ascribed to him, but I've yet to see an egregious offense in this regard.
I agree with others in that I feel like we are looking for reasons to hate Smith rather than give him a pass with how he's handling criticism. It's a tough spot to be in, so if he's a little defensive, I get it. I'm not going to stress about his comments. I want to see how he plays on the ice. That's mostly what matters to me. If his defensiveness leads to him playing with focus and drive, and that ends up leading to a hot streak all the way through a playoff run? Well I'd be just fine with him barking at every reporter along the way.
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I don't have any direct citations with me, I'm sure they're out there because it was on record. But even before he arrived here he was known for calling out his teammates. That was actually one of the concerns I had when he was acquired. But he came out of the gate on fire and was phenomenal his first few months to start last season.
But after the 5 day break, his game fell off significantly and there was definitely a point last season where he called out the team for the way they were playing. It's probably just in his nature since he's generally a very intense person, but his poor play this season along with his crabby interviews just leave a very sour taste in my mouth.