SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Right off the bat, Marc-Andre Fleury was asked Friday afternoon what it meant to "represent the Penguins" at the NHL All-Star game. The 2019 game, not the 2009 one.
"The Penguins?" Fleury asked, flashing those famous pearly whites.
Apologies accepted, Fleury moved on from the questioner as quickly and smoothly as he did from his playing days in Pittsburgh.
"Try to do well for my team, so the guys don't give me too much trouble when I get back," Fleury was saying.
As if the velvet green jacket he was wearing wasn't proof enough that Fleury is more Las Vegan -- Las Veganite? -- than Yinzer these days. This is the fourth time that Fleury has been to the All-Star Game in his career, but half of them have now come with him in the black and gold -- and grey and red -- of the Golden Knights.
Marc-Andre Fleury talks Evgeni Malkin, puck tracking, and more ahead of the #NHLAllStar Skills Competition ? pic.twitter.com/ibuqrtkzMS
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As beloved as he was in Pittsburgh, and still is, Fleury has become equally popular in Las Vegas where a walk around the concourse at T-Mobile Arena last week showed Flower on a gigantic poster and one woman wearing his No. 29 in very Vegas-like sequins:
Of course, Fleury wasn't so popular here in San Jose. During introductions for Friday night's NHL All-Star Skills Competition he was booed mercilessly along with the Sharks' other arch-nemeses like the Kings' Drew Doughty and Kris Letang, who scored the game-winning goal in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final at the SAP Center.
In the Save Streak competition, Fleury finished third after making seven consecutive stops despite, comically, trying to build his snow wall along the goal line. After Blake Wheeler scored, snapping his reign as the champion, Fleury threw his stick and accidentally hit a cameraman with it.
He’s at it again. ? ? #NHLSkillsCompetition
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"A little disappointed with the way that ended, but that's the way she goes some times," Fleury said afterward.
All's well that ends well, though. Fleury gave the stick to a kid sitting in the front row that was wearing his gray Vegas jersey.
"I was getting booed and he was cheering, so that was nice of the little kid," he said.
Going into the break, the Knights have dropped three of their last four -- their lone win coming last Saturday against his former team. But life is good for Fleury these days. The 34-year-old is the NHL's leader in both wins (27) and shutouts (6) after signing a three-year, $21 million contract extension last summer.
"I think it's a team thing," Fleury said, downplaying his stats. "You win as team, lose as a team. Our team has been playing some good hockey. Everyone's aware of the defensive zone. Also, helping me out around the net. Forwards (are) back-checking and coming back into the zone. Makes my job easier."
A year ago, Fleury and the Golden Knights were just a curiosity in garish uniforms as they became the first expansion team to play for a championship in North American major pro sports history. Fleury carried Vegas to within three wins of the Cup before allowing 16 goals over the final four games against the Capitals.
"It was a tough loss, disappointing," Fleury was saying.
This year, the Knights are surprising no one and the NHL's 30 other teams seemed to have found a cure for that dreaded "Vegas Flu." Despite that and a slow 9-12-1 start, Fleury and the Golden Knights are back on track and right where they want to be. At 29-19-4, they sit in third place in the tough Pacific Division and are a legit Cup contender again.
But as Fleury knows, the last team to repeat as Western Conference champions were the 2008 and '09 Red Wings, the team his Penguins lost to and then vanquished. The last team to do it in the East, of course, was Fleury's Penguins.
"It's just, really, when you go so far, having been there ... I know it doesn't happen every year, it's tough to go back to the Final, but when you have that taste, it's so close," he said. "You just want to go back and finish the job."
This week, the Pro Hockey Writers Association revealed its midseason award winners and Fleury was second only to Anaheim's John Gibson, a Pittsburgh native. Last season, Fleury finished fifth in Vezina voting his best showing to date. His previous best was seventh-place in 2011-12.
Not that Fleury is consumed by individual awards or stats. The only thing that matters to him, he says, is wins and losses.
Earlier this season, he surpassed Glenn Hall and Tony Esposito to move into ninth-place all-time in career wins. With 430 W's to his resume, Fleury is just 69 victories shy of cracking the top three behind only fellow French-Canadians Patrick Roy (551) and Martin Brodeur (691), who are both in the Hall of Fame.
"It's still early a lot of games left to be played," Fleury said. "Obviously, would be nice. We'll see. What matters is winning games, not the individual trophies."
SKILLS COMPETITION
Low glove? Kris Letang never shoots there. He says he's more of a low blocker guy.
Naturally, the last target he had to hit during Friday night's Accuracy Shooting competition was the lower right corner. He missed it and it likely cost him a chance to win the event. But that's OK.
"As long as I don't finish last, that's the main goal," Letang was saying with a laugh in the Eastern Conference All-Star dressing room.
Earlier Friday, Letang told me he didn't choose that event but he thought he could trump Sidney Crosby, who backed out with an illness:
The pressure was on Letang from the start as the Bruins' David Pastrnak, the first contestant, hit all five targets in a time of 11.309.
Letang, who was the sixth of eight shooters, finished second at 12.693. The Kings' Drew Doughty finished third at 13.359. Though he's been in previous skills competitions and has won three Stanley Cups, Letang said there were some nerves.
"It's crazy, it's crazy," he was telling me. "You see some guys are so calm. I'm 31 years old and I still can't get calm."
Once he saw Pastrnak's time, Letang said he figured he'd just go for it. He did. But the lower right target befuddled him.
"There's so much expectation," he was saying. "People don't understand. They see a guy go in 10 seconds and you're an NHL player, so they expect you to do the same thing. It's nerve-wracking."
Though Pastrnak won the Accuracy Shooting competition, the real winner was Auston Matthews. Before his turn, he shedded his home blue Maple Leafs jersey for a white road jersey underneath with the No. 12 of Toronto teammate and former Sharks star Patrick Marleau. Needless to say, the San Jose crowd ate it up.
• The Oilers' Connor McDavid won his third straight title as the fastest skater, posting a time of 13.378. Naturally, he edged out Jack Eichel. Again. Perhaps most impressively, U.S. Olympic gold medalist Kendall Coyne Schofield -- filling in for an injured Nathan MacKinnon -- posted a 14.346 to finish seventh.
• Johnny Gaudreau, the final contestant, posted a 27.045 in the puck control challenge, beating Patrick Kane's 28.611.
• Down to his last save, the Rangers' Henrik Lundqvist made a dozen straight stops to beat Tampa Bay's Andrei Vasilevskiy's eight to win the Save Streak competition. And who says the King can't win big the one?
• Edmonton's Leon Draisaitl won the Premier Passer competition in a time of 1:09.88. If the NHL wants to shed an event for the sake of shortening the length of the Skills Competition, I highly recommend this one. By the way, had she been an official contestant, U.S. Olympian Brianna Decker would've won the event by three seconds.
• It wasn't quite Al Iafrate, but Washington's John Carlson won the Hardest Slapshot at 102.8 mph. Zdeno Chara, by the way, still holds the record at 108.8 mph.