This and the sopranos are my 2 favorite organized crime shows ever.
Kurt Sutter, who writes SOA, has some ties to the Sopranos. I think he was either a writer or an executive producer (or both) for it, and has said before that Sopranos is a model for SOA in a few ways.
+1 on Justified coming in second. I'm going through the first two seasons now that the new one is about to start. As far as Netflix getting the next season, the last one was on there right around the same time it came out on DVD, which is within a month of the next season's premier. But I'm not obsessive or anything...