Wings move on from Givani Smith

[yave1964]

   Former second round pick Givani smith has been shipped out by the Wings, moving on from a terrible waste of a pick back in 2016.

 

  Smith went to Florida, Michael Del Zotto went to Anaheim and Danny O'Regan came to Detroit in what may be the most boring three team trade in any sport history, lol.

 

  Smith was taken in the 2016 draft, second round pick number 46 towards the end of the Holland era. The reason i groan every time i think of him is the two players taken right after, next was offensive defenseman Samuel Girard who won a cup last year with the Avalanche and then.....Carter Hart. The wings specifically Holland decided to go for a grinder rather than a puck mover or a potential number one goalie. The wings at the time had a quickly eroding Jimmy Howard in net with absolutely nothing in the AHL or anywhere else in the pipeline. Hart was the first goalie off the board two picks later. Ugh.

 

  Smith in 85 games, essentially a season worth has 7 goals, 14 points and 138 pims and is a minus 16. He will likely bounce around for the next few years between the AHL and some teams 4th line when they need grit and sandpaper for a few games or are down a couple of forwards. He will likely be in Europe within the next several years. I will try not to think of him again after today as the frustration of missing out on Hart still gets to me as it ddi on draft day that year.

 

  

[yave1964]

The warm body we got in the deal is Danny O'regan, his dad played a little bit in the NHL back in the day, Danny is just a warm AHL body who can score a little better than Smith. Too small to be a contributor on the bottom six, not enough offense to play up a line. He has been in 30 NHL games spread out over four years with 1 goal and 6 points which pretty well sums him up but he will bring offense to Grand rapids who is floundering as the parent Wings have been forced to raid the Griffins due to injuries. Nothing to see here.

[radoran]

Sucks to have made that pick instead of Hart. Of course they weren't the first to miss that swing.

 

So that brings up two questions:

 

1. Other teams make bad draft blunders?

2. Drafting isn't an exact science that is much clearer several years later?

 

Ok, three questions, this last from the perspective of another fanbase:

 

How is this Ron Hextall's fault?

 

[yave1964]

19 minutes ago, radoran said:

Sucks to have made that pick instead of Hart. Of course they weren't the first to miss that swing.

 

So that brings up two questions:

 

1. Other teams make bad draft blunders?

2. Drafting isn't an exact science that is much clearer several years later?

 

Ok, three questions, this last from the perspective of another fanbase:

 

How is this Ron Hextall's fault?

 

The year before this draft the Wings took a goalie named Joren Van Pottleberghe in, i believe without looking it up the third or maybe fourth round. Holland went on and on and on about how he was the future in net for Detroit, how he was the steal of the entire draft, which hey, we do have a long track record of finding euros in the draft that are passed over by other teams. I think that is why we passed on Hart. For the record, Van Pottleberghe never  even made it over the pond to play in North America. He played like five years in Davos in the Swiss league, not even a god quality league and i am fairly certain he is out of the game completely now. 

[radoran]

This is the difficulty of GMs over valuing their players and picks.

 

And trades.

 

Every GM thinks of themselves as an undisputed genius.

 

And "That's the news from the eSuite, where all the trades are won, all the players play to their potential all the time, and all the prospects are above average."