excellent info and good last point.
I certainly think he's a quality starting goalie, as well as a fantastic teammate, and easily in the top 3 at playing the puck.
I really disagree about these comments about Bryz being a bad teammate. It's also a disservice to Smith as some just insist on discrediting bryz instead of praising Smith.
bryz may have been eccentric, and a bit of a loner, but I didn't think he created any problems here ( see roenick v2). the team was successful, and the media sucks in phx, so that probably made it easier to live with his wacky interviews.... as opposed to Philly when they were losing, and had 20 mics shoved in his face every night.
Morris and company were pretty candid when Bryzgalov left, more so than I've seen about any other departing player. And Maloney reportedly had the option to bring back a humbled Bryzgalov for $1.5 million but instead opted for a long term deal with someone with one good year as a starter. A lot of negative reports came out of Philly, too (many of them from before he even left). That he's still unsigned should tell you a lot, too. I actually like Bryzgalov a lot as a person and as a player, but as a teammate, he seems to be a pretty big negative. If it factors into the calculus with Smith (and it seems to, and it should), it needs to factor in with Bryzgalov too.
With Smith, I agree fully about the intangibles beyond his numbers, especially the puckhandling (which I'm sure is quantifiable but I haven't seen anything reliable yet). I find it to be the single most underrated aspect of goaltending, and Smith's skills in this area are truly elite (not to mention invaluable on a team so starved for puckmovers).
But even with all that, if Smith is only turning in a .910 save percentage and a 2.58 GAA for the duration of this contract, he's overpaid. Those were his numbers last year, and they're not far off from his career numbers (.913/2.57).
Ultimately, my complaint about the deal isn't about potential results. Smith could earn this deal and even prove to be a bargain. It's about process. Offering a six-year deal to a 31-year old goalie with such a small body of work (and an inconsistent one at that) is a sizable risk.