Just because you dont think Smith was bad means others got some vendetta against Smith.
Smith has been better especially in neutral zone which was one of my biggest complain with him and it's good that he's better because we should be looking to trade him if his ceiling was only that high.
My problem with Smith is this season is that he's made some lousy passes in our zone at times leading to very unneccesary scoring chances for the other team. I'm not talking about those glaring mistakes he made that fortunately didnt end up in our net but simple execution that he had to get the puck out to forwards and such. He just needs to execute smarter at times and use his brain more.
I have not seen a whole lot of this, for me it is confirmation bias. Smith isn't turning the puck over at an alarming amount, turnovers happen to DeKeyser and Kronwall, in DeKeyser's case with almost absolutely no criticism.
Smith is providing a lot of push up the ice to help our exits. I have seen him switch the play and go up the middle much better. The growth is there and as to the neutral zone play, it has been posted several times the numbers don't match this, he was our most effective player last season at navigating the neutral zone and getting controlled entries and successful dump ins, that is honestly one of his strengths, though he can get wrong sided defensively at times during his aggressive pushes up the ice in terms of the neutral zone.
Since Smith came off his shoulder injury last year he has been a different guy. For the first couple weeks back he had the I am going to play my game with aggression, an at least I go out on my shield mentality. Around the New Years it started to pay off, Quincey and him finally got separated and he really started to take off. That has carried over, he is an important player for us and I really like his development since the calendar hit 2014 he has been a positive on most nights. It is a good thing for us, his minutes continue to rise and I think it slots guys into appropriate roles. Him in the Top 4 makes us a better team, if we could get him on the PP I would be very pleased, we still don't use him where he is most ideally suited.
But one has to say the you will learn defense thing looks like it is starting to pay off, though I think it is time to unleash him more offensively. We have waited long enough on that portion of his game, though for me this is more coaching deployment. We will see, this is a lot like the guy advertised, would like some more bite back in his game too, think some of that went missing after he knocked out Ben Smith. Still he is really starting to come into his own and it makes us a more dangerous team.
