Butler finally starting to calm down with the puck is doing wonders for the whole. That said, I'd wait a while before I declare him decisively improved. He has looked good in stretches before. All in all, right now it looks like Hartley has done a solid job with our defensemen, and Smid was an excellent pickup by Feaster.
I've been crying for a more mobile, better puckmoving defense for years, and it's nice to see it really does improve the whole team as much as I thought it would, even without franchise-type gamechangers. (Giordano is starting to be close to that status, although it remains to be seen how long can he actually stick to this level.)
With all that said; I would be very, very careful to make long-term conclusions on throw-away seasons like this. When the pressure to win is on every night, and more teams start to bring their A-game against us because they want to pass us in the standings, that's when you can start to make judgements on things like effort level and competitiveness.
The Oilers are a prime example of this. They've had many good stretches pretty much like this during their rebuild years, only to fold like a tent when the other teams start pushing. Heck, how many times have the Flames done just that in the previous years?
The above is not to say that we should _expect_ our team to fold under pressure of course, or that we shouldn't be happy about the way we play right now. This is basicly as good as you could realistically have expected at this point, and the team has every right to be proud of what they've achieved thus far.
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