Brendan Smith has been playing extremely well lately. Winged Pride thinks that Brendan Smith is one of the keys to the rest of the season. Last year the Wings biggest problem was their lack of depth at Defenseman. They had a good first pairing with Riggy and Kronwall, however they didn't have a strong second pairing. They essentially had two third pairings and when they began to face teams that had more depth they were overwhelmed. Smith in particular struggled a lot last year during playoff time. The pace of the game was too much for him. It sometimes gets lost in all this that Brendan Smith has still yet to put together an entire season due to last year's lockout. However, in the last two weeks Smith has a shown a lot of ability and a huge step up in his game. This is a huge deal for the Wings. If Babcock decides to split up Quincey and Smith(an idea Winged Pride is definitely in favor of) and put DeKeyser and Smith together as a second pairing, this team could be much more dangerous come playoff time if they can get a hot goalie and a motivated Franzen. Smith being an effective defenseman absolutely changes the identity of this team. Click the jump for the rest of the article.