Report: Bruins place Craig Smith on waivers

With bottom-six ice time getting more and more scarce, it appears that the Bruins have decided there’s no more room at the inn for Craig Smith.

Per Elliotte Friedman, the B’s placed Smith on waivers Sunday afternoon:

I saw many people react to the wording of this Tweet by saying that the Bruins were going to terminate Smith’s contract, but it appears that he (along with Austin Czarnik and Jason Demers) are just on regular waivers, sandwiched by those other “contract termination” guys.

By my understanding of the CBA, teams can terminate a player’s contract through waivers, but only if it’s a mutually agreed upon termination; Smith isn’t likely to agree to terminate a deal that will pay him a base salary of $4.3 million this season whether he’s playing in the majors or minors.

Game time has been getting more and more limited for Smith, who recorded an assist yesterday but skated just 8:49.

Since the start of November, Smith has appeared in ten games and only skated more than ten minutes TOI once.

He has a goal and three assists in 17 games this season.

Assuming Smith clears waivers, he’ll be adding to the total of Bruins’ “buried” money in the minors — according to CapFriendly, the team already has $2.1 million counting against the salary cap in the contracts of Chris Wagner and Mike Reilly.