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In completely indefensible news:
The #Oilers have agreed to terms with goaltender Mike Smith on a one-year, $2 million contract.@Rogers | #LetsGoOilers pic.twitter.com/2x9IQc1DsE
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) October 10, 2020
Well, that sucks.
I’m sorry, but signing a 38 year old goaltender who seems to be pretty obviously washed, who apparently ‘had his heart set in Edmonton’, and whose best days are quite certainly behind him is absolutely atrocious business.
The Oilers would have been better off letting Anton Forsberg play backup to Koskinen and allocating the $1.25MM in savings somewhere else in the lineup. Paying Forsberg league minimum for replacement-level goaltending is orders of magnitude better than paying Mike Smith almost three times as much for below-replacement-level goaltending.
As Sunil pointed out here, the Oilers should have been examining whatever decision-making processes they followed that led them to thinking Mike Smith was any sort of solution to any of their problems a year ago.
To double down like this?
It’s truly beyond explanation. Mike Smith has no business being in the NHL anymore, let alone for almost 3x the league minimum.
For all of Ken Holland’s admittedly good work so far through Free Agency, this is a massive mistake and goes a long way to undermining most of it.
Smith posted an extremely replaceable 0.902 SV% last season, posting a 19-12-6 record over 37 GP.