My favourite Marc-Andre Fleury anecdote is from his major junior days and it comes via the guy whose NHL team Fleury just beat for a milestone win.
In the 2000-01 QMJHL season, Pascal Vincent was coaching the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles club a 15-year-old Fleury played for. A few years later — when I was at The Hockey News and Fleury was just breaking into the NHL with Pittsburgh — Vincent relayed a story about how he had to pull the young tender one night when he was off his game. Rather than just have Fleury occupy the end of the bench in a baseball hat, Vincent handed him a clipboard and asked him to chart dangerous chances for both sides. When the contest was over, Vincent asked Fleury for his homework and the latter turned in a document with a blank front page.
“I saw he didn’t do anything,” Vincent told me, “so I was looking and there was a note on the back saying, ‘I’m not a statistician; I’m a goaltender.’”
Nearly 25 years later, Fleury notched his 551st NHL win — tying Patrick Roy for second all-time — by leading his Minnesota Wild to a 4-3 victory over Vincent’s Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday.
Way back when, Vincent was predictably ticked that a young punk goalie would blow off his coach’s request. But that exchange also reinforced to him and the Screaming Eagles staff that they had a competitor in their crease.
And no matter how talented you are, you don’t rack up 551 NHL W’s without some serious moxy. (I mean, just looked at the guy who wore No. 33 that Fleury just tied).
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Fleury’s easy manner and baby face have always belied his fiery resolve. Recall, this was a kid who had to work past a flub in the 2004 World Junior Championship that may have cost Canada a gold medal and — despite being the first-overall pick by Pittsburgh in 2003 — bounced up and down between the big league and the minors for a few seasons before settling in as the Pens starter and eventually flying across the crease to deny Nicklas Lidstrom a last-second goal with a Game 7 save in Detroit that preserved the 2009 title for Steeltown.
Even in later years, Fleury had to accept moving to a backup role in support of Matt Murray as Pittsburgh won a couple more Cups, then had to start all over again as the foundational piece of the newly formed Vegas Golden Knights.
And what happened after he backstopped that group of Golden Misfits to the most improbable Stanley Cup final appearance in league history in 2017? ‘Flower’ was uprooted again, but kept pressing on with lowly Chicago and, now, competitive Minnesota.
On Monday night, the 39-year-old is going for win No. 552 when the Dallas Stars visit Minnesota. Boy, did 15-year-old Fleury ever nail it with that note to Vincent: He’s a goaltender — and much more — all right.
Other Takeaways
• Have we reached the point where the Winnipeg Jets are the story of the season yet? Manitoba’s boys notched two more wins on the weekend, dumping the Ducks 3-1 in Anaheim on Friday and blasting Arizona 6-2 in the desert 48 hours later. Winnipeg has now ripped off six straight victories and hasn’t lost in regulation since losing 2-1 in San Jose on Dec. 12 in its first game after elite sniper Kyle Connor was sidelined long-term with a knee injury.
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The Jets have not surrendered three goals in 60 minutes since the last day of November, a stretch of 17 contests. Since Dec. 1, Winnipeg has an .882 points percentage (first in the league), allowed 1.76 goals-per-game (first) and scored 3.53 (sixth). In terms of individuals in that timespan, backup Laurent Brossoit — who got the W Friday — is first in save percentage (.952) among tenders with five games, while top man Connor Hellebuyck is third (.935). Up front, Nikolaj Ehlers — who scored in both weekend wins — is setting the pace with 20 points in 17 outings, while Gabe Vilardi, Vlad Namestnikov and Nino Niederreiter have all stepped up in Connor’s absence.
Let’s just leave this at, Wow.
• Sticking with the hot hands, Carolina lost 2-1 in a shootout to the St. Louis Blues on Saturday, but has now picked up at least a point in 12 of its past 13 outings to climb from outside the playoff picture to second in the Metro. The Panthers, meanwhile, continue to build on their Cup final appearance with a stellar season. Florida won a wild one in Colorado on Saturday, leaving Denver with an 8-4 victory for its seventh straight win. The Cats are currently just two points back of Boston for top spot in the Atlantic.
• Obviously the weekend could not have started worse than seeing Connor Bedard get hit by New Jersey’s Brendan Smith on Friday night and leave the game with what we now know is a fractured jaw. We don’t know the exact timeline for Bedard’s recovery, but you can’t help but think about similarities to the freshman season of Connor McDavid when you look at the situation.
McDavid basically missed three months of action when Brandon Manning caught him with a highly questionable hit that saw No. 97 plough into the end boards and injure his shoulder. Like Smith, Manning was not penalized on the play that resulted in an injury to a freshman wunderkind. For my money, the Bedard injury was an awful result of a clean play. Regardless, it just plain sucks for the 18-year-old and hockey fans everywhere. McDavid wound up playing 45 games as an NHL rookie and, hopefully, Bedard — injured in his 39th contest — will still end up with at least that many.
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• No matter what you made of Smith’s hit, it’s pretty hard not to feel for the Devils right now. Jack Hughes left that same game versus the Hawks with an injury we still don’t know the extent of (he didn’t suit up in Saturday’s 6-4 loss to the Canucks) and the scoring star joins a startling list of banged-up Devils who would normally be key contributors.
More and more it seems like Jersey is in season-from-hell territory.
Weekend Warrior
Cole Sillinger scored all three Columbus goals in its 4-3 shootout loss to Minnesota on Saturday for his second career hat trick. The 20-year-old is already a third-year NHLer and, after a great rookie showing, he sophomore slumped about as hard as you’ll see last season. Things weren’t going much better this year for a while, but Sillinger has surged lately with six tallies and eight points in his past nine showings.
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Red and White Power Rankings
1. Winnipeg Jets (26-9-4) Cole Perfetti had one goal in his past 14 outings heading into the weekend, but the youngster found the net against both the Ducks and Coyotes.
2. Vancouver Canucks (25-11-3) After Quinn Hughes’ three-assist showing in Vancouver’s 6-4 win in New Jersey on Saturday, the only players with more helpers than the 39 put up by the Canucks captain this year are Connor McDavid (40) and Nathan MacKinnon (43).
3. Toronto Maple Leafs (20-10-7) Martin Jones backstopped the Leafs to a win over his former team in San Jose on Saturday, completing a California sweep in the process. The veteran goalie — who turns 34 on Wednesday — has a .952 save percentage in his past six outings.
4. Edmonton Oilers (20-15-1) Saturday’s 3-1 win over Ottawa makes it seven straight victories for the Oilers, who have the second-best points percentage in the league (.739, behind only the scorching Jets at .800) since Kris Knoblauch took over behind the bench in mid-November.
5. Montreal Canadiens (17-17-5) Tough to vet this one, but I feel like most “Forsberg” shootout attempts end with a goal or a forward losing control of a puck that drifts harmlessly wide of the net. In Saturday’s shootout win over the Rangers, though, Sam Montembeault reached back and straight denied Mika Zibanejad even after the Swede perfectly executed his countryman’s famous deke.
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6. Calgary Flames (17-18-5) Losses in Philly and Chicago hurt, but seeing Jonathan Huberdeau grab three points on the weekend — and five in his past five — is something, at least.
7. Ottawa Senators (14-21-0) On Saturday, Elliotte Freidman reported that the Sens are the most active team on the trade market and it’s easy to see why after another loss in Edmonton that night. It’s getting grim for this squad, which has just two regulation-time wins in its past 13 games.
The Week Ahead
• Big Monday in the NHL, as the Canucks visit Madison Square Garden, the Battle of Pennsylvania wages in Philly and the Avalanche host the Bruins.
• San Jose lost its 11th consecutive game on Saturday when the Leafs beat them 4-1 in California. This marks San Jose’s second 11-game losing streak (it lost 11 straight out of the gate) in a dreary season. The boys in teal will try to avoid making it an even dozen L’s versus those same Leafs in Toronto on Tuesday.
• Saturday is the last time all 16 squads will be in action on the same night this season. It also marks the official halfway point of the 2023-24 NHL season.
