John Shipley: Whatever awaits Wild’s Marc-Andre Fleury in Pittsburgh, he’ll handle it with grace and humility
Marc-Andre Fleury is always happy to go back to Pittsburgh, where he started a remarkable career that will land him in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
“I spent 14 years there,” the Wild goaltender said this week. “Made great friends there — great people, met a lot of fans —and it always means a lot to go back and get some memories of my time there. I like to enjoy it.”
The streaking Wild, 7-2-0 under new head coach John Hynes, start back-to-backs Monday against a Penguins team that has lost five of its last seven games before ending a brief road trip Tuesday in Boston.
Fleury will start one of those games in goal, Filip Gustavsson the other. After Saturday’s 2-1 shootout victory over Vancouver at Xcel Energy Center, Hynes said he wasn’t sure which goalie would play in which game.
“I know that they’re going to split,” he said. “I don’t want to say the games yet.”
Hynes said he and goaltending coach Frederic Chabot have mapped out the goaltending schedule and that, in his experience as a head coach, it rarely changes. It would be a surprise if Fleury weren’t at least penciled in for Monday night, which could be his final game in the place he began building his legend.
“Obviously, it’s always nice, but those are coaches’ decisions and stuff,” Fleury said last Friday. “I don’t know, I don’t need more of a spotlight on me, or talking about it, right?”
Fleury, who acknowledged in training camp that this might be his final NHL season, talked to a lot of reporters about possibly playing his last game in his native Quebec when the Wild were in town for an Oct. 17 game at Bell Centre.
It didn’t seem to affect him much. The next day, he started for the Wild and stopped 26 of 28 shots in a 5-2 victory at Montreal on Oct. 17. After being named the game’s first star, he stayed a little longer to acknowledge the fans who stayed to cheer their local hero.
One can only imagine how he might be greeted in Pittsburgh, where he was the top backstop behind Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin for the Penguins’ second Golden Age — three Cups between 2009-17.
“It’ll be special, obviously,” he told a small handful of reporters Dec. 7 in Vancouver. “I had such a good time there, good teammates, the fans were great. Yeah, I don’t know. It will be special, no doubt.”
“But again,” he added, “I don’t want to be a sideshow. I just want to go enjoy the time there, try to get a win.”
Hynes has said repeatedly that the Wild will need two goaltenders if they’re to rally to make the postseason for the fourth consecutive season, especially for back-to-backs. But he also has leaned on Gustavsson, who has started seven of the Wild’s nine games since he became the coach on Nov. 27.
The young Swede has responded by going 6-1 with a 1.21 goals-against average and .954 save percentage after backstopping consecutive shootout victories over Calgary and Vancouver at the X.
Fleury has expressed frustration with his season, 4-5-2 with a 3.29 GAA and .886 save percentage in 11 games. He’s 1-1 under Hynes, making his last start in the second of back-to-backs Dec. 8 in Edmonton, where the Wild lost, 4-3. “I just want to win,” he said afterward. “I feel like I’m giving up too many goals.”
Asked about it last Friday, Fleury said, “Losing sucks, right?”
He stopped 36 of 40 shots in that game, and the winner was a power-play goal in the third period. “It wasn’t bad,” he said. “They had some chances. … But in the end, I still want to win and get a couple points.”
Fleury, 39, is four victories from becoming the second winningest goaltender in NHL history, and four games from becoming just the fourth goaltender to play in 1,000 NHL games.
“It’s remarkable where he’s at in his career, so you certainly do consider those and recognize those as a coach, because it’s something that’s important to the player and pretty significant,” Hynes said. “But we feel pretty confident Marc will be able to hit some milestones. He’s going to play for us, for sure.”
Playing in Pittsburgh doesn’t exactly count as a milestone, but it would be a special night for Fleury, playing on the last season of a two-year, $7.5 million contract. He said Friday that when he returns to an old stomping ground, he enjoys visiting with old friends and reporters, but he’d rather not talk about himself.
If he makes his 12th start on Monday, Fleury will have the advantage of the traditional practice of reporters not talking to the starting goaltender before a game. Afterward, win or lose, would be different. And if that’s the case, he’ll handle it gracefully. Fleury is a friendly person, as affable and humble a guy as you’ll meet in or out of hockey.
“I love going back to Pittsburgh,” he said. “I spent 14 years there. Made great friends there — great people, met a lot of fans —and it always means a lot to go back and get some memories of my time there. I like to enjoy it; I don’t need to talk about it 50 times.”
