New Jersey Devils Management May Not Be Sold On Ty Smith Yet
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils held a Q&A with interim general manager Tom Fitzgerald. Of everything, the comments he made about Ty Smith were the ones that stuck out.
When looking towards next year, it seems like it should be a lock for top prospect Ty Smith to make the jump into the NHL roster. It’s mostly need over his ability, despite the fact that he’s really good. Right now, the New Jersey Devils NHL defenseman signed into next season are P.K. Subban, Will Butcher, Damon Severson and Connor Carrick. That’s three starters and a depth guy. Smith seems like an easy pick even if the Devils add two players to the position this offseason.
Well, now it doesn’t sound that way. The New Jersey Devils interim general manager Tom Fitzgerald took questions from season ticket holders on Thursday evening, and was very candid for most of it. One question he got is “besides Ty Smith, which two or three Devils prospects are NHL ready?” Well, he didn’t sound convinced Smith was in that vein just yet.
"“Nice way to put ‘NHL ready’. We’ll see if Ty Smith is NHL ready, but if he’s not we have a plan for him. Obviously, he’ll go to the American Hockey League and he’ll work on his entire game and he’ll work on his confidence.”"
It seems as if the Devils have put more thought into having Smith start in the AHL than they have starting him in the NHL. When talking about what he needs to see from Smith, and any prospect for that matter, he wants to be wow’ed by them similar to what Jesper Bratt did three years ago. The problem is Bratt’s preseason is something most of us have never seen before. A 6th-round pick comes from out of nowhere as a 20 year old and makes the team as a top-six forward.
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It’s lofty to expect any of the Devils prospects to do that. Is that the right kind of pressure to put on Smith after how last preseason went?
Smith’s 2019 preseason was a disaster. He came into it expecting to make the team, and he absolutely played himself out of a spot on the NHL roster. Instead, he was sent back to Spokane to play one more season in the WHL.
Since then, he’s been named one of the top two defenseman in the entire league, won a gold medal with Team Canada at the World Junior Championships, focused on improving in his own zone and still scoring a ton of goals from the blue line. He scored 19 goals in 46 games before the season was suspended. It was his best goal-scoring season of his career anywhere.
In international play, he focused more on keeping pucks out of the net as a first line player. He only had three points, and no goals, across the tournament. On paper, it looks like he didn’t have the best tournament, but he played a crucial role in his country coming out with the gold.
Fitzgerald sounds like he needs to see more from Smith, and we understand the sentiment, we just expected a more confident approach after how last season went. At the same time, we’re not in the room with Smith. We don’t know what motivates him. Maybe the expectations to make the team is what put too much pressure on him. Tampering down the expectations in the media might be just what he needs. Either way, based on what we’ve seen, we absolutely expect Smith to be in New Jersey to start the year. However, now we won’t be shocked if he starts the season in Binghamton.