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Just a week after the Ottawa Senators extended Kyle Turris to a five-year extension at $17M, Bryan Murray and the rest of the office agreed to terms on a four-year extension with center Zack Smith.

Smith, who played in eighty-one games for the Ottawa Senators last season, scored fourteen goals and added twelve assists -- a solid, and really, unexpected display of scoring for a player known more for his physicality and raw strength. The front office saw Zack Smith as a cheaper internal replacement to departed players like Chris Kelly, and although Kelly had a sensational season in the Boston Bruins machine last year, Smith did well to earn his ice-time under first-year head coach Paul MacLean.

The extension will take Smith through the 2016-2017 season at a pretty cheap $1.8M average annual value. Smith was set to become a restricted free agent at the end of this season, and considering what we have seen on the open market with young players of varying skill sets, Ottawa did well to retain an internal option at an early dollar discount. The giveback is obvious -- Smith gets four years. That's not exactly a short deal.

Ottawa's certainly rewarding Smith for his solid 2011-2012 campaign, but I think the contract also speaks a bit towards where expectations are headed for him in the future. While I dispute any notion that the losses of Matt Carkner and Zenon Konopka are going to hurt this team, the club as a whole would do well to retain some of the physicality they possessed last season, and right after Chris Neil, Zack Smith's become a staple of that.

Still, there's plenty of internal competition, too, and Smith knows he's going to have to play well in order to retain or advance his respectable 14:04 TOI from one year ago. One area where Smith needs to improve right out of the gate is in the face-off circle; last year's 48.9% against a questionable strength of competition wasn't overly impressive.

Back with more tomorrow.

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