even if Lindy would call a defensemen up it would be cal foote

Honestly, when Smith was the 6/7 defender for the Canes, I didn’t have an issue with his defense. Haven’t watch him this year however.

If Dougie is out...they will need to call someone up to replace in lineup.

(so maybe its not Smith).

It's almost like they shouldn't have let both Severson and Graves go without replacing either with anyone...

Yes call up nemec and burn one year of his ELC. You understand that they burned a year of Hughes ELC by having him play 2 games last year. Also good idea to have the Dcore be more inexperience good logic mate. Its gonna be Cal if cal doesnt work out they will look for a trade.

Both those guys got bags. You weren't finding a 1 to 1 replacement for either at the cap space the Devil's had.

Money was obviously the issue. Essentially, Hughes was the swap for Severson and Miller was the swap for Graves

Him and TDA were in a tight battle for worst dman in the NHL before smith got moved to F and TDA got scratched

I find it really hard to believe that Smith is the worst defenseman in the NHL. Nevertheless that's not the point I'm going to make here. For any Devils fans who are unaware, Cal Foote won't be your savior, even in a #6 role. I'm the last person to drag a player down, but after watching Cal Foote for the past several years, I can assure you he wont be serviceable for more than 3 games. He's very unidimensional. If he plays good, it won't last. Don't let a couple good plays by him fool you, extreme defensive lapses and liability are always waiting around the corner with him. He can go from good to real ugly, very quickly. I always have and still hope for the best from him, and that he proves me wrong. Nemec is a far better option.

Smith has been a good penalty killer.

Horrific 5v5 defensively tho

In response to the first sentence, i have watched some pretty terrible devils teams thruought the past decade, and out of all of those teams, i seriously cannot think of a defensemen we have had that been as bad as he currently is. while it doesnt account for the rest of the league, i cant imagine it getting much worse. I like the guy as a 4th line enforcer type, but on D he just takes so many dumb penaltys and constaintly gifts the opposition scoring chances. While miller was out and hughes was on a pair with smith, hughes had to constaintly make plays to cover for smiths defensive mistakes, which is far from ideal considering he is not built for that. The only reason he has a job is because Lindy is a coach who likes to pick his favorites, and constaintly praises smith as a "great locker room guy". and i cant forget to mention that lindy has not scratched smith once this season, even when he was back on D every game and miller got healthy

I cannot imagine that any other NHL team would put up with this unless they are seriously tanking