In Craig Smith, Bruins might have found the steal of this top-heavy free agent class

He may not draw the same headlines as some of the other wingers available in this top-heavy crop of free agents, but Craig Smith very well could be the steal of the 2020 offseason.

The Bruins, a team in desperate need of scoring depth (especially at 5v5 play), signed Smith to a three-year contract Saturday morning, worth an average annual value of $3.1 million. Smith, 31, skated in 69 games with the Nashville Predators in 2019-20, recording 18 goals and 13 assists for 31 points with a plus-18 rating.

"Obviously, there’s different things that we looked at and with our options, we looked at obviously, the team, the organization, the people that we’d be working with," Smith said of what factored into the decision to sign with Boston. "The city has a big part to do with it. My wife is in love with Boston and I’ve always had a soft side for it so that definitely checked it. Those were two of the big boxes that we wanted to check and definitely checked them off, so we’re excited."

His baseline numbers are enough to appeal to even those who are likely underwhelmed with the signing— at least with more noteworthy middle-six options like Mike Hoffman and Evgenii Dadonov still out on the market.  After all, Smith has tallied at least 20 goals in five of his nine seasons in the NHL.  Since entering the league in 2011-12, Smith was the leader in games played and ranked second in goals and third in points among Nashville Predators.

On paper, Smith stands as a great addition to Boston's middle-six grouping — especially if slotted into a third-line role (his usual spot with the Predators) next to a puck-possession force like Charlie Coyle.

As we noted a few weeks back, Smith's value (especially when factoring in the lack of term and agreeable AAV) on this Bruins club would already be justified given the expected production you'd find in most regular statbooks (20+ goals, 15-17 minutes ATOI, regular PK/PP shifts). But you take a deeper dive at the numbers, and — especially for $3.1 million a year — Boston has added a veteran that, at a minimum, gives you a viable top-six weapon, and a potentially devastating trigger man next to Coyle.



It doesn't take very long to find the merits of bringing a player like Smith into the fold — he's a volume shooter with great 5v5 metrics, is strong down the other end of the ice, and perhaps most importantly, he's done it over a consistent amount of time.

Rather than hand over more cash to empty-calorie scorers like Hoffman (who is dreadful on defense and generates a healthy amount of offense from top power-play minutes), a player like Smith has consistently elevated just about every line he's logged regular minutes with in Nashville — with most of his shifts coming on the Preds' third line.

I mean, Nashville is not an exactly an offensive dynamo (3.07 goals per game - 16th in NHL), but it's tough to ignore just how how much the Predators' offense receives a boost whenever a third-liner like Smith steps out on the ice.

(For reference on Micah Blake McCurdy’s individual impact charts via Hockey Viz — On the offensive side of things, you’d want to see a player providing positive numbers — with the red blobs signifying where the team is generating a majority of their shots from whenever said player is on the ice. Defensively, negative numbers are a sign that a team is snuffing out opposing scoring chances whenever said player is on the ice. As such, the blue blobs represent where the opposition’s shots aren’t regularly coming from. As seen above, the Predators generated a TON of excess shots right around the opposing net and other Grade-A ice when Smith was out on a shift. We've done plenty of these side-by-side comparisons when it comes to evaluating the impact of a player at 5v5 play — but this one is particularly striking.)

In total, there were 668 NHLers that logged at least 200 minutes of 5v5 ice time this season. In that large pool of players, Smith ranked:

41st overall in 5v5 goals per 60 minutes —1.12
5th overall in 5v5 shots per 60 minutes —11.74
5th overall  in 5v5 individual expected goals for per 60 minutes — 0.98
21st overall in 5v5 individual shot attempts per 60 minutes — 16.67
37th overall  in 5v5 individual high-danger scoring chances per 60 minutes — 4.55

Of course, those excess shots don't exactly mean much if those chances aren't buried, but 14 of Smith's 18 goals this season were tallied during 5v5 play — which would rank third on the 2019-20 Bruins (Pastrnak/25, Marchand/21). Even when he's not burying those looks, Smith's perference to shoot (a lot) in Grade-A ice around the slot often leads to quality chances — as he has generated 57 rebounds chances over the past three seasons, which ranks 15th among NHLers.

Add in his solid play down the other end of the ice, and Nashville's third lines have served as two-way buzzsaws over the last few seasons, with Smith playing a major role in such metrics. A forward trio of Smith, Nick Bonino and Rocco Grimaldi may not strike fear into the hearts of casual NHL fans, but players on the ice might differ — considering the lopsided goal totals that they racked up in 2019-20.

As we noted in our last scouting breakdown on Smith:

"We played against each other quite a bit when he was in Minnesota but I don’t know him personally," Smith said of Coyle. "I liked his game. I like the way he skates. I think he thinks the game well. Obviously, he’s a big strong body and he can make plays. For the last couple years, I’ve watched him. That would be great. Like I said, I don’t know how things are going to shake out here when I get to Boston and get to work. If I have a chance to play with him, I think that would be an exciting opportunity and I’d definitely take advantage of it."

There is still plenty of work that Boston needs to take care of in the coming days and weeks, but if we focus the lens of just this deal — the Bruins absolutely hit a home run here.

Stats and graphs via Natural Stat Trick, Sean Tierney and HockeyViz.