BRIGHTON, Mass – New Bruins acquisition Gemel Smith was on the ice for the Saturday morning skate and will make his Black and Gold debut tonight in a divisional game against the Toronto Maple Leafs at TD Garden.
What could be better than that?
Smith will play left wing with Sean Kuraly and Chris Wagner against the Leafs and will get an immediate look on the bottom-six for a team that could use a little more physical and offensive pop at the bottom of their forward group. Smith, 24, has totaled 11 goals and 20 points in 77 games the past three seasons with the Stars and now he’ll get a look from a Bruins organization that could desperately use some energy amid a three-game losing streak.
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“He’s got some time in the league. He’s fast. He should help us on the fore-check, and he’s done more penalty killing than power play. It’s a pretty good program there in Dallas, so I suspect he’ll be good away from the puck,” said Bruce Cassidy of a player that has two goals, three points and a plus-1 rating in 14 games with the Stars this season prior to being waived. “I’m not sure what happened there and why he got pushed out, but we’ll put him in tonight. He’s out West, so we didn’t get to him a lot. We’ll see if he slides up, and he’s played left wing predominantly and some center.”
Clearly, Smith isn’t going to be a game-changing addition and the fact he was waived means he wasn’t playing well enough with the Stars. Still, the Bruins needed to do something to switch things up and improve both their penalty killing and their bottom-six depth. the hope is that Smith can do one, or preferably both.
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