A lot of us said this summer, Howie was unlikely to be close to as bad as he was last year. Agree though on these points. I think Smith's growth is going to really help this team, he looks better than he did down the stretch run and playoffs last year where he was our second best D-man in my opinion. Right now he and DeKeyser are playing to pretty much a dead heat, that gives us four good D-man and appropriately slots Quincey who looks terrific quite frankly to start the year. Ericsson has had a pretty mediocre start but looks better tonight, not surprisingly he isn't taking the #1 guys either.