COLUMBUS, Ohio — Marc-Andre Fleury won nine playoff games for the Penguins in the spring of 2017 just months after his team asked the goaltender to waive his no-movement clause for the purpose of exposing him in the Golden Knights’ expansion draft.
It was an agonizing, uncomfortable period for all involved at a time when the Penguins were pursuing a second Stanley Cup in as many seasons. Fleury was a franchise cornerstone, the first overall pick in the 2003 NHL Draft and a universally beloved figure in Pittsburgh.
The French-Canadian goalie with the winsome smile and perpetually sunny disposition backstopped the Penguins to a 2009 title and helped position them for a 2016 Cup run before a late-season concussion opened the door for Matt Murray to become the team’s No. 1 netminder. General manager Jim Rutherford met with Fleury in February of 2017 and explained the reality of the Penguins’ predicament. The team was facing salary-cap issues and the prospect of losing the younger, cheaper Murray to Vegas if Fleury didn’t sign his waiver.
The Fleury camp appreciated Rutherford’s honesty and transparency. The general manager even offered to trade him to any team he desired, providing that club showed interest in return.
Fleury elected to remain with the Penguins through the end of the season and embraced the challenge of playing for a start-up organization the following fall. That decision proved beneficial to both sides as an injury to Murray in pre-game warmups of the first playoff game enabled Fleury to lead them to series wins over the Blue Jackets and Capitals before Murray regained his job in the Eastern Conference finals.
“I thought it was the right thing to help the team, to stay with the team and finish the season here and have a chance to play for the Cup again,” Fleury told our Dave Molinari after the franchise celebrated its fifth championship.
At age 32, Fleury left the only organization he knew to become the face of the new-born Golden Knights. While the rules governing Vegas’ entry to the NHL were designed to give it access to better players than previous expansion clubs, some sports books set its chances of winning the 2018 Cup at 500-1.
Fleury incredibly guided the “Golden Misfits” into the Final. This season, at age 36, he's a Vezina Trophy finalist for the first time in his career, and has Vegas three wins away from a return to the championship round.
“Marc-Andre Fleury is the Frank Sinatra of hockey,” his longtime agent Allan Walsh said. “His second act has almost been better than his first act in many ways.”
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Marc-Andre Fleury on the day he was drafted No. 1 overall in 2003.
There haven’t been many great second acts in the sports world — assuming the first act was just as good — and there’s a logical reason for that. It’s bad business to let star players leave your organization while they still can help you compete for championships.
It’s why so many second acts, especially in the era before free agency, ended with a whimper, not a parade. Think of Franco Harris with the Seahawks. Michael Jordan with the Wizards. Willie Mays with the Mets. Guy Lafleur with the Rangers.
In recent times, the second-act success rate has improved. Paul Coffey helped the Penguins win their first Cup in 1991 after a contract dispute in Edmonton made him available. Patrick Roy won two more titles with the Avalanche after storming off the Montreal ice during the 1995-96 season. Peyton Manning raised another Lombardi Trophy after leaving Indianapolis and Tom Brady has done the same following his exit from New England to Tampa Bay.
In an age of NBA player empowerment, LeBron James and Kevin Durant have become hardwood Galacticos, wresting away control of their careers from ownership and management to form superteams.
But few second-act stories rival the one Fleury is writing in Las Vegas. He never wanted to leave Pittsburgh. He didn’t join a club that became a championship contender with his mere arrival.
And yet here is Fleury, who’s endured searing career disappointments with the Penguins and Golden Knights, thriving in the autumn of his playing days. His regular-season save percentage (.928) and goals against average (1.98) are personal bests. If Vegas wins the Cup, he’s a good bet for the Conn Smythe Trophy.
“He’s one of those guys who don’t come around very often,” said former NHL goalie Ron Tugnutt, who also experienced life with an expansion franchise in Columbus. “For his age, he’s playing the best he’s ever played. We can credit his teammates and say the Golden Knights are a great team, but for him to adapt so quickly in Vegas and become the cornerstone leader of that team from the start — that’s among his greatest achievements.”
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Former Penguins' forward and coach Ed Olczyk.
Ed Olczyk grabbed a pair of the headphones from the NBC broadcast perch in T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas last week and wanted to steal a quick word.
“Hey, Kid,” Olczyk said to Fleury moments after the Golden Knights wrapped up a second-round series win over the Avalanche in Game 6.
Olczyk’s broadcast partner Brian Boucher was about to conduct an on-ice interview with Fleury, but the old Penguins’ coach couldn’t help himself. He wanted to extend congratulations, but mostly Olczyk wanted to bask in few seconds of warmth and joy that Fleury has radiated throughout his career.
“I always feel better after talking to Flower,” Olczyk said. “And as soon as he recognized my voice and started talking, I instantaneously felt better.”
Fleury has been playing the game so long that former teammates are now in NHL management positions. His first Penguins’ roommate on the road was defenseman Marc Bergevin, who’s now GM of the Canadiens — the Golden Knights’ opponent in the Stanley Cup semifinals.
All these years later, Olczyk still calls Fleury, a father of three, “Kid.” That was the nickname Edzo hung on the athletic teenager after the Penguins drafted him.
What some forget is that joining the made-from-scratch Golden Knights was not nearly as daunting as playing behind the 2003-04 Penguins, who lost 47 games and were led in scoring by Dick Tarnstrom.
“We had a lot of heart-to-heart talks that year,” said Olczyk, who was Fleury’s first NHL coach. “He played out of his mind for us early in that season and he didn’t understand some of the decisions that were being made that included him being sent back (to juniors).”
The Penguins probably didn’t want to shatter Fleury’s confidence toiling for such a defensively-inept club. Some also have speculated the franchise, which was financially strapped at the time, jettisoned him to the juniors ranks to avoid paying contract bonuses he could have hit.
When Fleury returned the next season following the lockout, he was joined by Sidney Crosby. Evgeni Malkin arrived a year later and the Penguins were on their way to back-to-back Cup appearances against the Red Wings in 2008 and 2009.
Olczyk was behind the bench for the goalie’s first two seasons in Pittsburgh and in the broadcast booth at Joe Louis Arena when Fleury robbed Nicklas Lidstrom in the dying seconds of Game 7 to preserve the Penguins’ third Stanley Cup in 2009.
“We made the right choice to move up and draft him No. 1 overall,” Olczyk said. “It’s hard not to — and I don’t want to say become emotional — but it’s hard not be attached to his story because of the relationship. I got to see him come in as a young 18-year-old, and he’s still the same ‘Kid’ today.
“Sid became the guy, but Marc-Andre was right next to him when it came to helping the Penguins become the team that won Cups. I have been around the game since I was 18, and that’s a long time considering I’m approaching the old speed limit (55). As you know, we have some real special people in our game, but there’s very few people who I have come across who have a personality as infectious as his. Guys loved to play for him in Pittsburgh, and guys still love to play for him in Vegas.”
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Gerard Gallant had more pressing matters Monday afternoon than responding to a text message from a DK Pittsburgh Sports reporter. News had just broken that the Rangers were naming him their new coach.
But Gallant picked up the phone anyway and spent about 10 minutes discussing one of his favorite former players.
“Marc-Andre was definitely the key to that hockey team,” Gallant said of the goalie who led his Golden Knights to the 2018 Final. “When we had him in the net, we knew we had a chance to win every night. His leadership was second to none. We had a lot of good pieces, but he was the key to our group.”
The Golden Knights’ inaugural season began amid tragedy. Days before the opener, a lone gunman opened fire on an outdoor concert site, killing 60 people and injuring hundreds of others in the worst mass shooting in American history.
The city’s first major-league franchise helped bring Las Vegas some solace in those horrific early days after the shooting, winning eight of its first nine games. Fleury won 29 times that season and recorded a .927 save percentage before the Golden Knights topped Kings, Sharks and Jets en route to a Final's appearance against the Capitals.
Good goaltending is paramount to any deep Cup run, but netminders are rarely considered leaders inside a locker room.
“He was a voice in our dressing room,” Gallant recalled. “He had won Stanley Cups, and while we had other vocal guys in the room like Deryk Englland, he led us as our best player. He didn’t wear the ‘C’ on his jersey, but everyone knew he was our captain.”
Known for his charitable deeds in Pittsburgh, Fleury continued the trend in his new home. It wasn’t just donating money, Gallant said, it was the way he brought smiles to the faces of people who were enduring difficult times.
“He could do it with just a wink of an eye or flipping a puck to someone in the crowd,” Gallant said. “He did it with our guys, too. When you come to the rink every day, it’s a grind, there’s pressure. This guy comes to the rink and he’s like a 10-year-old kid who just loves being on the ice. Teammates appreciate that.”
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Marc-Andre Fleury carrying the Stanley Cup in Nashville in 2017.
Daryl Reaugh played professionally for seven seasons before becoming a television analyst for the Stars and serving several stints as a national broadcaster.
Few better understand the unforgiving nature of the game having spent much of his career in the minors.
“I never really had a ‘first act’ so I’m not sure what I could add,” Reaugh said jokingly.
The former goalie marvels at how Fleury has compartmentalized the downturns in his career only to rebound from each one. Last season, the Golden Knights benched him in favor of Robin Lehner for their playoff run to the Western Conference finals.
Just when it appeared Fleury might be done in Vegas, he responded with a Vezina-worthy campaign to regain the starting job and move into third place all-time in regular seasons wins with 492. His 90 career playoff victories ranks him fourth.
“He plays with such a lack of mental cholesterol,” Reaugh said. “It doesn’t seem like he ever thinks or glances at the past. Whether it’s the recent past -- like that angora-soft goal against Colorado (and) sitting in favor of Lehner last year — or the distant past when being moved by the Pens. He just (lives) in the present. And he seems to be enjoying the piss out of competing.”
Gallant said there were times during Fleury’s first two seasons in Vegas when the coaching staff begged him to take days off between games with little cooperation.
Over the years, Walsh has enjoyed watching Fleury practice, seeing him fight for every puck and never giving up on a shot. He will chirp teammates and sometimes break sticks over crossbars when getting beat on shots he thinks should have been stopped.
The global pandemic has challenged athletes not only physically, but mentally. Extended periods of isolation and separation from family can affect people no matter what their tax bracket.
“I’m used to hearing (clients) express fatigue about the grind, about life on the road, especially the last year or so with feelings of loneliness and anxiety and some depression,” Walsh said. “The reality is professional athletes are human beings and they have the same issues and problems as society in general. But anytime you are around Marc, he’s laughing, he’s smiling, he makes you feel good. He has a little boy’s innocence about him.”
Fleury also is remarkably agile for a man a few years shy of 40. He continues to twist and contort in the crease, demonstrating reflexes of a much younger athlete.
Reaugh considers Fleury a “hybrid,” a netminder who doesn’t just rely on his positioning and butterfly techniques. There’s an artistry about his game that reminds Reaugh of goaltenders from past generations.
Tugnutt was the same age as Fleury is now when he tore a groin muscle off a pelvic bone, essentially ending his career.
“He hasn’t lost any flexibility,” Tugnutt said. “I watch him and one leg goes one way and one leg goes the other way and I know when I see it happen, I think to myself, ‘I don’t know if I would get back up.’”
The Golden Knights-Canadiens series features two of the top goalies of their generation. Carey Price, 33, remains with the franchise who selected him No. 5 overall in 2005. He’s still searching for his first Cup, and took another step Wednesday night in a 3-2 win that evened the series.
Fleury will be in bounce-back mode, a position he’s often found himself since leaving Pittsburgh to begin his second act.
The Penguins made the logical choice four summers ago when they kept Murray at the expense of Fleury. Walsh called it a “bittersweet” farewell, one tinged with sadness, but no hard feelings.
“Jim Rutherford treated Marc-Andre Fleury, especially that last year, with the upmost respect,” Walsh said. “For Marc, it was a time for renewal and to start over with a blank slate.”
Many Penguins’ fans are rooting for Vegas, while some still wonder how history might have been altered had Fleury not suffered the late-season concussion in 2016. Rutherford reportedly tried to re-acquire him last summer, but talks gained little traction.
Olczyk understands why some see Fleury’s time on the Vegas Strip as a second act akin to Sinatra and the Rat Pack playing the Sands in the 1960s. The former coach, however, sees Fleury’s career as one long-running attraction that’s still evolving.
“I just look at it as an elongated voyage that’s had some obstacles, but keeps finding its way back to greatness,” Olczyk said. “He keeps making guys believe in him, keeps making people fall in love with him, right? He’s been gone from Pittsburgh for four years and they still love him there.”
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Marc-Andre Fleury before Game 2 of the first round of the playoffs.
