Fleury giving Penguins boss a reason to smile

Veteran goaltender remained ‘best team player in sports,’ even when riding bench

At the exact moment in time you are reading these words, it’s a good bet Marc-Andre Fleury, wherever he is, will have a huge grin on his face.

Then again, when doesn’t he? In the heat of battle Wednesday night, in Game 7 against the rival Washington Capitals with the Pittsburgh Penguins’ entire season on the line, you could see the ear-to-ear grin he was wearing behind the bars of his mask. And it got even bigger when the final horn sounded and he had shut out Alex Ovechkin and Co. 2-0, thereby allowing the defending Stanley Cup champions to advance to the Eastern Conference final against the Ottawa Senators.

He’s happy. His team won. Who wouldn’t be, right?

Where Fleury is different from the rest of us is he looks at the world in a glass-half-full way, even when there might be only a drop or two in the bottom of it.

Even in times of adversity, he tries to see the positive. Such was the case a year ago when a concussion he suffered late in the season allowed rookie Matt Murray to take over his starter’s job and run with it all the way to the title.

At no point during that run did Fleury sulk. Or complain. Sure, inside, behind that omnipresent upbeat, life-is-good look on his face, he wanted to play. Badly. But this was, first and foremost, what was best for the Penguins.

It’s a philosophy that was proved to be the right one, a lesson that was solidified when he had the opportunity to sip from the Stanley Cup last June at the SAP Arena in San Jose. It’s that unselfish attitude that makes Marc-Andre Fleury a rare specimen in a world of spoiled and pampered athletes. And it’s one that prompted Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford to give him perhaps the highest praise any player can possibly receive.

“He’s the best team player in sports,” Rutherford told Postmedia Thursday.

Can there be a more prestigious compliment handed out by a boss? Probably not.

“We know the history here of what he’s done,” Rutherford said. “And then we get to last year when he got hurt and didn’t get back in. And then he got hurt again this year. And then Murray was hurt, and Marc took the net and he ran with it. And then at the most critical time of the season when we needed him he was at his best.

“Just a special guy and a special player.”

Murray was going to be The Guy the Penguins leaned on as they attempted to become the first team to repeat as champs since the 1997-98 Detroit Red Wings. That was the plan, anyway.

But when Murray suffered a lower-body injury during warmup before Game 1 of Pittsburgh’s first-round series against the Columbus Blue Jackets, Fleury stepped in and has never looked back, going 8-4 since.

In the cramped visitors dressing room at Verizon Center on Wednesday, when the Penguins were celebrating their win, Rutherford greeted his goalie who, of course, was smiling. You expected something different?

“I obviously congratulated him as everybody was doing,” Rutherford said with a chuckle. “But I mean, his actions spoke for themselves.

“Hey, he’s always smiling. He’s smiling even when things aren’t at their best. This is a guy with just a very positive attitude towards his game and towards life. He’s just a guy everybody likes to be around.”

With Murray having just backstopped an outstanding Stanley Cup run last spring, there was no shortage of speculation that Rutherford would deal Fleury at some point during the 201617 season. Looking back, the Penguins GM certainly is glad he didn’t.

“You go back to the start of training camp when people were asking all the questions about our goaltending with Matt Murray coming off the year he had — ‘where’s (Fleury) going?’ and all that,” Rutherford said. “I said at the time my preference was to keep both goalies and to have both goalies going into the playoffs.

“There were some calls inquiring about him, but those conversations didn’t go very far.”

Instead, the Penguins have already advanced relatively far in their quest to defend their title.

And you can thank a smiling Marc-Andre Fleury for helping make that happen.