Quote:
Originally Posted by FiveSeven
Surprisingly nobody touched on the whole Smith playing the puck too much stuff. Sometimes when he wasnt doing the best job with handling the puck I just wanted to scream. Just stay in the net for once!! It did help end the forecheck but also seemed to limit breakout speed because defenders are usually just being still waiting for the pass. Which led to comments of the team playing faster under rittich. Guess we will see but I'm definitely much more optimistic about goaltending this season.
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I think this is key, and when people raised concerns about this element in Smith's game during the playoffs I started to see the position differently.
My problem was not with Smith's play of the puck—he is EXTREMELY good at it, and very rarely ever made mistakes. The problem is not Smith—the problem is how the defence responds to Smith's puck-play. The game probably slowed down whenever Smith played the puck, in part because Flames defencemen were never in such a hurry to get to the goal-line if they never had to, but also perhaps because it gave the Flames defense too much time to overthink plays when they were anticipating the pass from Smith.