LOL--it's an opinion board. People getting upset over the potential buying out of Smith? Okay. A lot of people weren't so upset when Girardi got bought out who had a far bigger investment of blood, sweat and tears into the Rangers than Smith has ever had. That guy ate a couple thousand pucks anyway for us.
The Rangers routinely sign 3 or 4 or more free agents every summer. What makes anyone think that that is going to change? Anyone think that none of them will be defensemen? They'll also have a plethora of young players starting their ELC's next year---Howden, Ronning, Gettinger and on D at least Hajek, Lindgren and Day and possibly Bereglazov is going to be back to go along with the likes of Pionk, DeAngelo, Gilmour (if re-signed) , O'Gara (if re-signed), Bigras if re-signed) fighting it out for probably at least two spots with the Rangers + Pedrie, Crawley and Zborovskiy. It's not like we don't have enough D for Hartford already. So then there's Shattenkirk, Skjei, Staal and Kampfer for the NHL team---that's 16 names and Smith is 17 and if we sign another NHL level defenseman or two that's 18, 19. That's a little overloaded on D IMO.
And I'll tell you what if I'm Brendan Smith I don't want to be sitting in Hartford all next year. Maybe he could make the Rangers but maybe not. He played like shit this year. And if I'm Brendan Smith if the Rangers are going to buy me out I want them to do it in the summer not in the middle or at the end of training camp when teams are going to be set.