The Red Wings have reached an agreement with RFA blueliner Brendan Smith, signing him to a two-year, $5.5 million deal with a $2.75M average annual cap hit.
Smith, 26, was Detroit’s first-round pick at the 2007 draft and appeared in a career-high 76 games last year.
Despite that games played total, it wasn’t an incredibly successful campaign; Smith’s numbers took a dip (in points and minutes per game, specifically) and former head coach Mike Babcock made him a healthy scratch for Game 1 of the club’s opening-round series against Tampa Bay.
Still, Smith figures to be a fairly key cog of Detroit’s defense moving forward.
He’s scored himself a pretty decent raise -- up from the $1.26M he was making annually on his old deal -- and should be firmly planted in the top-six group alongside Niklas Kronwall, Kyle Quincey, Jonathan Ericsson, Jakub Kindl and Danny DeKeyser next season.