The San Jose Sharks had ten reasons to make Thursday night’s preseason game look important. Will Smith supplied the quieter one.
Smith asked coach Ryan Warsofsky for an opportunity to work on the penalty kill, and Warsofsky gave him one in San Jose’s 10-0 victory over the Anaheim Ducks at SAP Center. The coach’s explanation was straightforward: Smith reads the game well, anticipates plays and wanted a chance to use those qualities on a different unit.
That makes the trial worthwhile precisely because it remains a trial. A penalty-killing shift is not a merit badge for being clever, and one lopsided preseason game cannot establish that Smith has mastered the detail, discomfort and repetition the role requires.
It does show that the Sharks are willing to examine whether his hockey intelligence can expand his usefulness beyond the offensive assignments that come naturally to him.
Smith’s statistical contribution was modest by the standards of a night when San Jose scored ten times. He finished with one assist, four shots, a plus-2 rating and 14:10 of official ice time. He also had two giveaways. There was enough activity in that line to consider his whole game, even while the scoring attention went elsewhere.
The modest scoring line matters. Smith’s assist came midway through the second period, when Mason Marchment scored San Jose’s seventh goal from a play also involving Macklin Celebrini. It was productive work, but Smith was not the engine of the attack.
Ivar Stenberg and Michael Misa each finished with four points, while Igor Chernyshov had three. A one-assist night was hardly going to dominate this particular scoring sheet.
That may be the right way to assess the night. Smith did not need to score three goals to justify consideration for penalty killing, and three goals would not have answered much about his defensive reliability anyway.
The relevant evidence will come from how he handles the less glamorous parts of the job: reading developing plays, staying connected to his partner and making clean decisions when possession is more valuable than an ambitious pass. Warsofsky’s praise of Smith’s intelligence and anticipation gives the experiment a rationale; it does not provide the conclusion.
There was some structural support for the test. San Jose posted a shutout, and Alex Nedeljkovic stopped all 21 Anaheim shots. The Sharks also held the Ducks without a power-play goal, with Nedeljkovic stopping all seven shots he faced while Anaheim had the man advantage. Smith’s penalty-killing work therefore occurred inside a sound team performance rather than a night of obvious defensive panic.
