Mastodon
Search for:
@Pittsburgh Penguins

Ty Smith Clears Waivers



Ty Smith Clears Waivers

by BenZoobs

8 Comments

  2. penguins2946

    I’m shocked that a guy who has been on a consistent decline for 3 years and stunk in the pre-season went unclaimed on waivers. Never could have seen this coming!

    The fact that Smith cleared is nice, he can be a useful addition for WBS, but it just makes the Marino trade look even worse for Hextall. Not only did Smith get waived a year later, no one even wanted him off of waivers.

  3. Rook22Ti

    Jesus, the only thing bad about Hextall being gone is that they can’t fire him harder.

  5. robertobondar

    i’m not sure Smith has much value for other teams, but him passing through waivers makes him easier to trade I believe.

  6. starlightequilibrium

    I just want to add my “no one asked” opinion because I think there are a lot of disingenuous takes regarding Smith and also the Marino trade in this sub. This trade has sucked for the Penguins **AND** Ty Smith.

    First off, I’m not sure why, but I think John Marino is easily one of the most overrated prior Penguins in this sub. Smith and Marino have similar offensive output in the NHL, yet Smith played for arguably some of the worst Devils teams in the two years he was there. This was also during the height of PK Subban’s injury woes. The entire blue line was in constant flux.

    This was also within a storied Hextall process of “throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks” trading. In all fairness, both the Matheson and Marino trade were at the same time, and they both served one purpose: clearing cap space from two overrated players for one overpaid player. The issue was that Ty Smith coming back as an asset was a complete waste within our asset management. Ron Hextall spent us against the cap and put nearly 0 thought into the fact we already had a similar asset and player in Pierre-Olivier Joseph, who was **not** waiver-exempt.

    Coming out of the 2023 camp and preseason, Ty Smith was clearly out ahead of POJ – but it didn’t really matter. We were never going to send POJ through waivers and risk losing our main trade piece (it certainly wasn’t Galchenyuk) in the Phil Kessel departure. By all accounts, POJ plays in WBS last season if he were waiver-exempt, and Ty Smith moves the needle neither forward nor backward on the crappy season we had.

    Ty had a great work ethic in WBS last year and was their best defenseman. He was significant within the community and won the AHL Man of The Year in Wilkes for a reason. He also unfortunately suffered a pretty substantial injury that further hampered his development.

    **TLDR;** Smith isn’t a bad player but a victim of our previous GMs god-awful asset management.

  7. robertobondar

    Nick Kypreos is a bad-take machine, but among his worst was that other teams would be less likely to claim Leafs on waivers if Mark Hunter was the GM instead of Dubas, because Hunter was more intimidating. (Edit: I believe this came up after the team lost Travis Boyd to Vancouver)

  8. eltree

    I understand everyone is upset that we lost Marino for Smith but I don’t get the complete 180 about Smith in this sub.

    Last season he was the answer to all our prayers and everyone was bashing Sullivan and management for not calling him up before Friedman, and other defenseman before Smith got his call up in January.

    Then when Smith got sent back down, everyone got irate over it.

    I don’t think I will ever understand this fanbase

    Edit: Would like to add, Matheson and Marino pretty much turned into Karlsson.

    Though we had to retain some salary with Petry.

Write A Comment