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.