Meh, Smith choose to go the college route and if I remember right has gone back during his summers and completed his sociology degree from the University of Wisconsin. While he might be the kind of typical right down to his look and talking to the media of the jock you didn't like, I don't think he is a dumb guy at all. Not your cup of tea I get it, but I have found plenty of people from all walks of life to be surprisingly intelligent or frankly stupid with no real cross cutting explanation one way or the other.
I think in trying to curtail some of Smith's defensive lapses we wasted a really good offensive D-man. Smith was more of a Brent Burns type of prospect and should have been treated as such. To play a rambunctious offensive and physical game was when he was at his best. He made mistakes but he could make big plays too. Smith generally played his best hockey for us in the playoffs, I don't think it is a mistake and it is a big part of why he got his big contract in New York. We warned Rangers fans, he went too deep in his career I think to really break out there. But when he first came up there was a player. It might have been a Sandis Ozolinsh/ Brent Burns way too offensive guy, with yes some real what the heck was he thinking in his own zone kind of deal. But that was the player you needed him to be to maximize his potential. He didn't need to be a PK guy, he didn't need to be the smartest dude in the world in his own end. We really really screwed up the good traits he had in the desperate search to round him, he suppressed shots well enough and was passable, the play was finding him a right handed D-man that could stay at home and cover for him and we just really had a dearth of talent on the right-side for most of his tenure. Just bad timing, bad system and a bad development philosophy. He didn't need to be the brightest guy on the ice, I think we just needed him to consistently buy-in and play a freer game, Babcock simply would not allow that.
