The good news for this part of the season is that we are being presented with a bunch of chances to watch the future of the ducks play. Devante Smith-Pelly (to be referred to as DSP from hereon) and Kyle Palmieri have been playing at an elevated level of play for the last few weeks. Both of them have spent time with Getzlaf and Perry on the top line, and Palmieri even netted 2 goals a couple of weeks ago against the big bad Red Wings when he was playing right wing for Getzlaf and Bobby Ryan. Both of these kids are playing an impressive branch of hockey and (to be honest) are two of the few things that make watching Ducks hockey fun - well them and searching the stadium every home game for a "Fail for Nail" sign somewhere. How has no one jumped on that?
Along with those young forwards we have to mention the young defensive duo of Fowler and Sbisa (the real #5 in Anaheim, who is this Pujols everyone is talking about?). Fowler has been slumping a bit in recent times and his +/- (plus-minus) is showing it. He's a minus 1 in each of his last four games bringing him to a miserable -23 (good for an impressive 869th in the league). His only stats that are on pace with last year's stats are his +/- and his PIM. Not the two stats that Fowler would have wanted to keep pace with (granted I don't think he really gives a hoot about his 16 PIM). Despite Fowler's sophomore slump point-wise, he has stepped up and made some relatively impressive defensive plays recently, something we pretty much never saw last year. Sbisa, on the other hand, has been consistently paired with Francois Beauchemin, which might be why he's been playing a more impressive all around game than Fowler recently.
