Smith-Pageau-Stone
They are dominating.
Shows how Smith is an underrated player around here too
Good skater, great size and strength, great shot, decent hands for a bottom-6 Center, great on face-offs, scores well for a guy not getting PP time (outside of a little stretch), strong on the puck, very good defensively and brings some physicality. All that on a very good contract.
I just checked something on WoI
Out of 463 NHL forwards who played more than 1000 minutes at ES since 2011-12, Zack Smith is 237th for Goals per 60 minutes with 0.60, tied with Heatley, Hodgson, Gionta, Jokinen... and better than Briere, Jordan Staal, Tuomo Ruutu, Brandon Sutter, Backes, Kesler, Dustin Brown, Marcus Johansson, Killorn, Purcell, Handzal, Callahan, Silfverberg, etc.
It means that at ES, Smith has been scoring like your 6th best goal scoring forward should be scoring... That's including last season where he struggled with only 2 goals in 37 games (injured season)... And lot of people wanna trade him just like that because the team is not reaching the next level.
Man, I wish our bottom-6 was made of 6 Zack Smiths.
Dominating the AHL... 23 goals 15 assists 38 points in 30 games
Pageau is very important marketing-wise for the Gatineau area, can't afford to trade him as long as he has a positive impact on the team. I do think Condra was let go because of the emergence of Pageau.
Don't really want to participate in that debate but isn't the highlighted a bit exaggerated?
I mean, it took time for him to start scoring but has he really been "awful" or even out of place?