Let me first start with saying, the reason for this post is that many people think that Pascal Dupuis isn't performing to a level that he should be performing being that he's on a line with Sidney Crosby, but most people seem to give Chris Kunitz a pass because he appears to be having a more productive season.  I'm not going to say that Pascal Dupuis is having a great season, I just don't think he's really getting a fair shake of the stick.  

I'm not a huge stat guy, or at least a huge stat guy past the basic stats that NHL.com has, so there will be no Corsi or any of those sabermetric-type stats in my post... if you want those, talk to one of those guys.

All of the statistical information was taken from NHL.com & dobberhockey.com

See the rest, after the jump.

So here are the basic stats I am using.  Just looking at these at face value, obviously Kunitz is having a better season than Dupuis.  I mean he has 12 more points, a better +/-, that's a pretty easy argument.

So the argument I hear the most, Dupuis plays with the best player in the world a majority of the time, he should be putting up better numbers than .43 points per game.  Well that may be true... but here's why I think he's not getting a fair shake. 

Chris Kunitz plays 18:26 minutes per game, and per the stats on Dobberhockey.com, of those 18:26 minutes per game that he plays, 80.25% of those minutes are spent while Sidney Crosby is on the ice which equates to 14:47 minutes per game.

Pascal Dupuis plays 16:58 minutes per game.  of those 16:58 minutes per game, 53.53% are spent while Sidney Crosby is on the ice which is 9:05 minutes per game.  

That's 5:42 minutes per game that Kunitz is on the ice with Crosby more than Dupuis is on the ice with Crosby. That's PER GAME!  Over 45 games thats' 256.5 minutes more ice time with Crosby than Dupuis, which if you account for 60 minute games, that equals 4.275 games.  

Dupuis basically only plays with Crosby when it's even strength and gets virtually no power play time, while Kunitz is part of the 1st power play unit and gets the 3rd most PP time per game(only Crosby and Malkin have more).  And yet he only has 7 PP points this season.  This is just speculation, but if you replaced Kunitz on the PP unit with Dupuis, I would bet Dupers has at least 7 more points this season...  which would put him right on line with Kunitz minus his PP points.  

Kunitz already has more minutes per game than Dupuis, and of the time Dupuis is on the ice, 2:43 minutes of that is spent short handed where he isn't expected to score goals.  Kunitz plays very little short handed.  

So give Dupuis a break... or at least throw Kunitz under the bus as well. :)