Smid Out for the Season

Ladislav Smid's neck injury that kept him out of last night's game requires surgery and will keep him out for the rest of the season.  This is obviously bad news for the Oilers - you'd certainly want your core players not having surgery - but it's also bad timing (not that there's every really good timing).  With Visnovsky and Grebeshkov traded, Smid would have been the clear number three man on the depth chart.  If I were in the Oilers situation I would have paired Smid with Gilbert in shut-down role for the last twenty or so games to see whether or not Smid could handle that kind of assignment going forward.  It's particularly difficult to tell how good Smid really is because of his fantastic results this season when paired with Visnovsky and his somewhat less fantastic results when apart from him.  Seeing him in a shut-down role without Visnovsky for the last part of the season would give the club useful information for this off-season, especially since "shut-down defender" is likely the role Smid is going to have if he's to become a really valuable member of the hockey club.

On the other hand, the timing is actually kind of good.  Smid is a pretty respectable player and with him in the lineup they're more likely to win.  With Smid out, they've now got both Jason Strudwick and Aaron Johnson in their top four.  Well, they would if they actually played the best four defenders in the top four.  As it stands, Taylor Chorney is probably going to play with Strudwick on the third pairing while Theo Peckham gets put with Aaron Johnson.  I'm pretty confident the third pair is second best.  But that's really the other thing Smid's injury offers, a chance to evaluate Chorney and Peckham at the NHL level to see if they want them as full-time members of the team next year.  My early evaluation suggests that if the Oilers are hoping to win games, they don't want Peckham and Chorney as high as 7th on next year's depth chart.

So get well soon Ladislav!  We'll see you next year!