from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

Sometimes when big-money contracts blow up, it is not on the team but on the player. In the case of the Rangers and Brendan Smith, it is the latter.

There is no joy in piling on Smith, placed on waivers Thursday on his 29th birthday just 54 games into the first season of the four-year, $17.4 million contract he signed with the Blueshirts days before he could have gone on the open market to score riches of that size from some other team. Surely, these are the worst days of a well-regarded hockey career in which he was Detroit’s first-round selection in 2007 and spent five years with the Red Wings before coming to New York at last year’s trade deadline.

But Smith, an affable Type-A personality who was one of the Blueshirts’ most important players in the playoffs, bears the responsibility for the train wreck that his 2017-18 became right out of the gate following a summer in which he got married and, as he told the Rangers’ website prior to camp, was a guest at seven other weddings. Maybe No. 42 was even able to sneak in some time for conditioning between bashes.

If placing the defenseman on waivers seems harsh, there is little doubt that management wants it to feel that way.

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