I think it says a lot about how Schmidt has developed and matured lately that he can miss an entire month of games, and spend most of the warm ups goofing around with Holtby because he didn't expect to play (as the TSN feed kept pointing out), and slot back in and not miss a beat. Last year Trotz's rotation of the #6D between Schmit, Chorney and Weber really did for Schmidt's confidence, and it showed when he returned to the lineup each time.
I was also really pleased to see them play Schmidt with Alzner - with a D corps this deep, keeping the pairings together where possible makes a lot of sense. We could so easily have ended up with Alzner-Niskanen, Orlov-Shattenkirk or something.
Also, while Schmidt would be in the top-4 of a lot of teams right now, no team in the league has a better #7, #8 or even #9 and #10 in Ness and Gilbert. Likewise, our backup goaltending would rival a lot of starters. The only questionable aspect right now is our forward depth - Vrana and Carey are both good players, but neither is a complete NHLer right now.