Monday morning, I was mentally planning a blog entry about how Everyone’s Favorite Goalie’s status in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton was quickly becoming that of a backup to the suddenly amazing journeyman goalie Adam Berkhoel. After Berkhoel recorded his third shutout of the season against Binghamton on Saturday, Curry let up four goals to the Syracuse Crunch on Sunday for the loss. Eeek. There are ups and downs to every athlete’s career, and this looked like Everyone’s Favorite Goalie was going through a rough patch.
Dan Bylsma, coach of the Baby Pens, said to my all-time favorite AHL blogger, Jonathan Bombulie, that he doesn’t believe in coaching emotionally and seems to believe in his ongoing goalie rotation:
“I don’t think coaching emotionally is a great way to coach. We had a plan going into the weekend and stuck with the plan. John played well in his game on Friday night, didn’t play poorly. Adam Berkhoel played well in his game on Saturday. It wasn’t a question of going with one guy who was hot and one guy who was not. Both were playing well.”
Still, a true Boston or Buffalo sports fan (of which I am both) always exists in an Eeyore like state of constant pessimism, and as such, I took the performance of Berkhoel to mean that Everyone’s Favorite Goalie may be spending more time on the bench in the near future.
But wait. Will that bench be that of the Big Pens?
Word out of the Steel City today was that Penguins franchise goalie Marc-Andre Fleury – one of the best Quebecois names ever, in my opinion – is out of Tuesday’s game due to an undisclosed lower body injury. Dany “I don’t know anyone who can really pronounce his last name” Sabourin will get the start.
If the Pens decide to call up a goalie, they would call one of the two goalies in the Penguins organization with two way deals, which my Twitter buddy QuickFacts was quick to remind me of. And those two would be Everyone’s Favorite Goalie and David Brown, who is currently playing with Wheeling of the ECHL.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Pens believe Fleury’s injury is bad enough that he can’t dress, and they decide to call someone up, or if he dresses and just doesn’t start. The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie call-up watch is on (I feel like I should make a graphic, like when the local news make the “Economy in Crisis” or “Storm Watch 11” graphics)….
