Dan Ellis was one of the really great stories of last season, a 27-year-old career minor-league goaltender who came into the Predators' camp as the third stringer and by season's end walked away with the starting netminder's job.

The incumbent, Chris Mason, was shuttled out to St. Louis in the off-season, and just like that, an unheralded goalie who'd had only one NHL start prior to 2007-08 was one of the NHL's 30 starting goalies.

This time around, that could be Michael Leighton.

The Montreal Gazette's Dave Stubbs had a really nice story on the netminder yesterday, a tale of where his crazy hockey journey has taken him to this point. You can see it just looking at the transaction wire the last few years:

Leighton's had more than Ellis's cup of coffee in the NHL — but not much more. Drafted in the sixth round by Chicago in 1999, Leighton had 50 NHL games to his name prior to this season, 34 of which came with an awful Blackhawks team in 2003-04.

His career record in the big leagues is 13-25-10, nothing to crow about, but he has a career .917 save percentage in the AHL, including a sparkling season last year with a bad team in Albany, where he posted a .931, was named the AHL goaltender of the year and earned the right to be Cam Ward's backup.

Previous winners of the AHL goalie of the year? Jason LaBarbera, Dany Sabourin, Ryan Miller, Dwayne Roloson, Martin Biron, Manny Legace and Felix Potvin.

In preseason, Leighton was miles better than Ward this season, and so far in the regular season he's picked up three starts and posted a sparkling .927 save percentage. The Hurricanes have needed better goaltending the past few seasons and Ward's starting job isn't quite as rock solid safe as some might think, especially not if there's a veteran backup winning his starts every time out.

Here's a look at the backups outplaying the starters in the league so far this season (minimum three games played):

Every year we see a starter lose his role, and Gerber seems like a prime candidate this time around. It's a funny position in that sometimes athletes can simply lose "it," something we've seen from everyone from Jim Carey to Roman Turek to Andrew Raycroft.

With teams scrimping on backup goaltending due to the salary cap, more guys like Leighton are going to get their shot — and some will even steal the spotlight for a while.

Like Dan Ellis.