Minding pipes
Holtby, Fleury have contrasting styles in their games
Marc-andre Fleury playfully thanks his goalposts after an opponent’s shot hits one and stays out.
At the other end of the rink, Braden Holtby is so dialled in that when a puck gets past him, he squirts water up in the air and follows it with his eyes to refocus.
In the pressure cooker that is the Stanley Cup final, the goaltenders for the Vegas Golden Knights and the Washington Capitals can be quite different when it comes to personality.
The fun-loving Fleury, picked by Vegas in last June’s expansion draft to be the face of the NHL’S 31st franchise, flashes his infectious smile at nearly every opportunity.
Holtby, Washington’s nononsense netminder, is at the opposite end of the spectrum.
And while they also use contrasting styles - Fleury has a tendency to react to the play in front of him compared to Holtby’s strength of trying to read what’s coming next - there’s no arguing the end result.
“Studs, awesome dudes,” Capitals defenceman Matt Niskanen, who has suited up in front of both goalies, said before the series. “Fleury’s a jokester and Holts is all business.”
“They go about achieving success in pretty different ways,” added Washington defenceman Brooks Orpik, like Niskanen a former teammate of Fleury’s when all three were with the Pittsburgh Penguins. “The main component of their success is probably their competitiveness and preparation.”
Another place where the roads of Fleury and Holtby whose Capitals lead 2-1 heading into Game 4 - intersect is the adversity they’ve overcome getting to this point.
Fleury, a three-time Stanley Cup champion, was squeezed out in Pittsburgh the last two years by the up-and-coming Matt Murray. The 33-year-old never said a word to rock the boat on back-to-back titlewinning teams before getting snapped up by the Knights when they started to build what has become one of hockey’s most remarkable stories.
“Nobody expected that,” Fleury said of the Knights’ success. “I’m happy that we were able to prove a lot of people wrong. We have a great bunch of guys, great chemistry.”
And through it all, he never lost who he was.
“I love to play, and I still have a good time,” said Fleury, who had an astounding .947 save percentage through the first three rounds of an improbable playoff run. “I love yelling at the guys in practice when I stop them.”
Holtby, on the other hand, struggled for stretches this season, eventually losing the starting job to backup Philipp Grubauer at the beginning of March before regaining the crease halfway through Game 2 of Washington’s first-round matchup with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The 28-year-old helped Washington come back to win four straight in that series, finally beat Pittsburgh in the second round, and then shut out the Tampa Bay Lightning in Games 6 and 7 to advance to the franchise’s first final in 20 years.