Dany Sabourin, Litterbox

Dany Sabs making a save...Not pictured, all the haters who don't think he is capable of such a thing

Dany Sabourin he's the #2 goalie, a lot of people have decided to go #2 on him. Penguins backup goalie might be confused for a litterbox, considering how much he gets dumped on. Among the slights was when 2K sports rated Dany Sabs as tied for the lowest rated player in their video game. Puck Daddy found that out of 100, they gave him a 6 for puck-handling.

SI's Allan Muir is the latest throwing a subtle dig at Sabs:

"no one believes that Dany Sabourin can fill in for Fleury as admirably as Conklin did last season."

We do not mean to undermine Conkblock or take away from anything he contributed when Fleury got hurt. But let's face facts:

#1: Conklin went 18-8-5 with a 2.51 GAA and a save percentage of .923%. And he was actually even better than those numbers really indicate Who in their right mind would have expected that 12 months ago? No one.

#2: Sabourin himself was 10-9-1 with a 2.75 GAA and a .903%. Not world beating numbers, but not half bad for a backup. Those that label the Pens backup goalie depth as a concern probably have MAF and Conkblock’s outstanding performances in their head and don’t realize that Sabourin appeared in 20 games and the sky didn’t fall. He didn’t perform as well as a starter, but that’s ok because he’s not the starter.

#3: In the salary capped world, teams more or less put all their eggs in one basket with the starting goalie receiving the lion share of the playing time (and salary) and the backup either being a journeyman or a young, inexpensive player. IF Fleury-- or pretty much any contending team's starting netminder-- were to go down for an extended period they'd be in trouble. That Conklin pretty much saved the Pens season (with help from Evgeni Malkin), his super performance shouldn't be used as a negative for Sabourin.