Reilly Smith‘s post-celebration departure from Nevada was reported and quickly confirmed with him and his contract valued at five million dollars per season packaged to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a 2024 3rd Round Pick.
Smith’s on the move! 🏃♂️
Fresh off winning the #StanleyCup️, Reilly Smith is heading to Pittsburgh. 🐧 pic.twitter.com/6Hnaw5tK6t
— NHL (@NHL) June 28, 2023
Smith, 32, has maintained incredible consistency in his career. He has just three seasons below 40 points since his first full NHL season with the Boston Bruins in 2013-14. In fact, Reilly Smith’s 26 goals, 30 assists, and 56 points last season with the Vegas Golden Knights were penultimate (assists and points) and career-high (goals) totals.
Penguins Acquire Reilly Smith
For the Pittsburgh Penguins, acquiring Reilly Smith provides essential middle-six stability and depth, which the team massively lacked last season. Despite pace-of-play metrics among the league’s best, the Penguins missed the playoffs. This was due to a cumulative result of primarily inconsistent finishing, alongside other issues not entirely related to the forward core. Through the d-zone, Smith provides exceptional board-side reliability at the wing. This allows more ambitious strong-side wingers to exit the zone early while providing an option for defenders to utilize space for Smith to enter the offensive zone at productive quality.
While ageing may impact Smith’s positive zone-entry play, his play-reading is not likely to diminish by the same effect. In-zone, Smith excellently reads loose pucks and is self-directive to pucks. He generates offence at strong rates while producing at more moderate rates. This is due to the lower-quality nature of Smith’s shot selection. With this cerebral puck anticipation, Smith factored rather well into the possession masterclasses displayed particularly in the playoffs, with the ultimate reward: a Stanley Cup victory.
Smith’s Implicative Departure from Vegas
Vegas swiftly revealed their ulterior intention when shortly after the announcement of this trade, Vegas announced their signing of forward Ivan Barbashev to an identical average annual value (five million) for five seasons. Barbashev enjoyed a solid 45-point season. This was a slight reduction from his 60-point 2022 campaign, but notably provided in the Cup run for Vegas. At a younger age and slightly higher productive ceiling, the rationale for selecting Barbashev over Smith is fair. That doesn’t change that it was not without disappointment. The value of a third-round pick next season is not overly large. However, receiving value for a cap dump in exchange for a player signing is ideal for the Golden Knights.
Alongside William Karlsson, Smith has enjoyed abnormally pleasant third-line stability in Vegas from the inaugural season. Labelled among the Vegas “misfits,” Smith’s inclusion on the Stanley Cup-winning roster in-context of the Golden Knights expansion story was glamorous for many. This is why his somewhat surprising exit quite shortly thereafter may be an outstanding but necessary disappointment. Cap struggles and desirable signings await Vegas this off-season. Recouping quality assets for a contract such as Smith’s is ideal to provide a strong cup-defending push. Determining if Smith was the proper eviction (especially considering Barbashev) will likely hinge on confounding factors related to the Penguins.
Implications for the Penguins with Smith
Aside from the mentioned impacts Smith will provide the Penguins forward core, this deal may be somewhat indicative of a direction the Penguins will take in preparing for next season. While the signing of Smith is exclusively impactful, the Penguins have created more enigmatically negative undertones in this deal. Namely, the re-signing of winger Jason Zucker appears far less likely for the Penguins. Considering a rebound season without injury (rather rare in Zucker’s career), the mixed reception from Penguins fans is apparently reasonable. Pittsburgh still sees approximately 15 million in total cap space after this deal, but defensive or goaltending upgrades might take deserved precedence as the Penguins look to exact the remainder of their contention window with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang.
If the Penguins are unable to afford higher-end acquisitions such as Jason Zucker after their collection of off-season decisions, acquiring Reilly Smith still serves encouraging for the beginning of a Kyle Dubas-lead Penguins era. Especially with head coach Mike Sullivan, the Penguins serve flavourful opportunities to extract truly meaningful two-way impacts from Reilly Smith and balance a lopsided forward core.
Main Photo Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports
