WWYDW(SE): Should the Oilers bring back Mike Smith?

Since we still have no idea what’s going to happen with the 2019-20 season despite the league’s best efforts to keep the dream alive, I wanted to look ahead at what’s to come for the following year, specifically at what the Oilers are going to do in net. In this week’s What Would You Do Wednesday (Sunday Edition), I want to know whether you believe Ken Holland should bring back Mike Smith for another year or go fishing for another option?

Despite this being one of the strangest springs in human history, Ken Holland and his staff have been busy checking off items from their offseason to-do list. So far, we’ve already seen new contracts for Gaetan Haas, Filip Berglund, Markus Niemelainen, Theodor Lennstrom, a rejection from Anton Slepyshev, and it’s all happened before we’ve even gotten word on what’s going to happen with the rest of the 2019-20 campaign. Clearly, Holland is thinking of the future and we must follow suit. So in the interest of looking ahead, I thought we should put our heads together and take a peek at what’s going to happen in net behind Mikko Koskinen for the upcoming season, whenever that may be.

When I started thinking about Smith’s time with the Oilers, I went back to the comments section from the day he signed his deal to refresh my memory about where we were all at the time, and, needless to say, many of us were not happy. Early in the year, we saw Mike Smith play well and we saw him falter, but as the season wore on and the calendar flipped into 2020, the then 37-year-old vet started to find his grove and provided the Oilers with some stability between the pipes. That said, he’s also been pretty inconsistent over his 39 appearances this season and that’s why I need all of you to make the call on what happens next. In 39 total appearances, Mike Smith posted a 19-12-6 record with a 2.95 GAA and a .902 save% to go along with one shutout and one of the best goalie fights we’ve seen in a long time. Is that enough? That’s up to you to decide.

Maybe you think Holland should bring Smith back on another one-year deal just to maintain some consistency? Maybe you think there’s a better option out there that will cost as much or less than what it would cost to bring Smith back for another tour of duty? Maybe you’ve got an idea in that big ol’ brain of yours that I haven’t even thought of and your wizardry is going to blow us all away? In this week’s What Would You Do Wednesday (Sunday Edition), I want you to make the call on Mike Smith’s future with the Oilers and whether or not it would be a good idea for Ken Holland to bring him back?

What say you, Nation?