diff --git a/evcache-core/src/main/java/com/netflix/evcache/EVCacheSerializingTranscoder.java b/evcache-core/src/main/java/com/netflix/evcache/EVCacheSerializingTranscoder.java
index 0235b81b..95c7a86e 100644
--- a/evcache-core/src/main/java/com/netflix/evcache/EVCacheSerializingTranscoder.java
+++ b/evcache-core/src/main/java/com/netflix/evcache/EVCacheSerializingTranscoder.java
@@ -186,7 +186,7 @@ public CachedData encode(Object o) {
                 b = compressed;
                 flags |= COMPRESSED;
             } else {
-                getLogger().trace("Compression increased the size of %s from %d to %d",
+                getLogger().debug("Compression increased the size of %s from %d to %d",
                         o.getClass().getName(), b.length, compressed.length);
             }
 
diff --git a/evcache-core/src/main/java/com/netflix/evcache/metrics/EVCacheMetricsFactory.java b/evcache-core/src/main/java/com/netflix/evcache/metrics/EVCacheMetricsFactory.java
index a57ad347..7247e809 100644
--- a/evcache-core/src/main/java/com/netflix/evcache/metrics/EVCacheMetricsFactory.java
+++ b/evcache-core/src/main/java/com/netflix/evcache/metrics/EVCacheMetricsFactory.java
@@ -131,7 +131,11 @@ public Counter getCounter(String cName, Collection<Tag> tags) {
                 if (counterMap.containsKey(name)) {
                     counter = counterMap.get(name);
                 } else {
-                    List<Tag> tagList = new ArrayList<Tag>(tags.size() + 1);
+                    int size = 1;
+                    if (tags != null) {
+                        size = tags.size()+1;
+                    }
+                    List<Tag> tagList = new ArrayList<Tag>(size);
                     tagList.addAll(tags);
                     final Id id = getId(cName, tagList);
                     counter = getRegistry().counter(id);