He was a throw-in. A warm body to plug one of the gaps created when then-GM Ray Shero sent Colby Armstrong and Erik Christensen to Atlanta as part of a blockbuster five-player deal for sniper Marian Hossa at the 2008 trade deadline.
Indeed, when Pascal Dupuis first arrived in Pittsburgh, he was regarded as little more than a 28-year-old journeyman who’d once scored 20 goals for Minnesota. One who was skating for his fourth NHL team in a little over a year.
Yet over time Dupuis would come to justify the trade on his own.