Creased lightning Knight light
Like the current occupant of the White House, the Vegas Golden Knights do not appear to have yet reached the limits of their ability to shock.
There it was again Thursday night. A 7-0 plundering of the San Jose Sharks. Just when you thought here comes a team capable of putting the Knights in their place, a Stanley Cup finalist two years ago no less, Vegas laid utter waste to the Silicon Valley skaters by a converted touchdown.
To at least one member of the Knights, this wasn’t totally unfamiliar territory. In fact, a year ago, goalie Marc-André Fleury was doing something very similar for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Matt Murray, who had become head coach Mike Sullivan’s clear preference in net, was injured, and back in went Fleury to first defeat the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round and then the Washington Capitals in the second round.
That said, even in Pittsburgh, Fleury wasn’t winning quite like this.
Thursday was Fleury’s third shutout in five playoff games. He has allowed three goals — total — on 163 shots this spring. That .982 save percentage is beyond absurd, beyond startling even by the startling standards of this Vegas team.
Seven different players scored goals for the Knights against the stunned Sharks, including former Wild players Erik Haula and Alex Tuch, perhaps evidence used against Chuck Fletcher this week when he was abruptly dismissed as general manager in Minnesota. Fleury made 33 saves without a single error. San Jose’s Martin Jones had been one of the few NHL goalies who had come close to matching Fleury’s work during the first round as San Jose swept Anaheim, but he didn’t even get to finish this one.
When you consider Vegas had to use no fewer than five goalies at various times last fall because of injuries, including Kamloops junior Dylan Ferguson at one point, the rock-solid stability Fleury has now given the team seems even more remarkable.
To some degree, Fleury is the descendant of a long, timehonoured tradition of goalies who have become heroes for NHL expansion outfits, a tradition which began in 1967 when 36-year-old Glenn Hall backstopped the St. Louis Blues to the 1968 Stanley Cup final. Hall’s reward was to be posterized by Bobby Orr two years later.
Buffalo started out with Roger Crozier in 1970-71, and he quickly became a hero in that town, as did Phil Myre and Dan Bouchard two years later when they became the goaltending tandem for the Atlanta Flames. Ron Low went 8-36-2 with a 5.45 goals against average for the first-year Washington Capitals, but still became a fan favourite, perhaps for bravery, as he faced an average of 43 shots per outing.
Peter Sidorkiewicz delivered Low-like heroics for Ottawa in the return of the Senators, registering eight wins in 64 games. John Vanbiesbrouck immediately became a fan favourite in Miami in the first season of the Florida Panthers. Ron Tugnutt was the first No. 1 goalie in Columbus, so popular that GM Doug MacLean decided not to trade him at the deadline in his first year and brought Tugnutt back for a second campaign.
So the storyline of “expansion goalie as popular hero” isn’t exactly new. Fleury, however, has taken it to an entirely new level, at least partially perhaps because, unlike most of those others, he was thrilled to be plucked by a first-year team in an expansion draft. Not that he necessarily wanted out of Pittsburgh. But he did want to play, and he actually greased the wheels for his own departure, particularly unusual given that he had a no-movement clause in his contract and controlled where he could and could not be transferred. When the Penguins won the Cup last spring, it was revealed that Fleury had actually waived his no-movement clause four months earlier, which meant the Pens knew for certain they could expose him in the expansion draft and not risk losing Murray. That did, however, mean Vegas GM George McPhee held all the cards when the expansion draft rolled around, and Pittsburgh had to send a second-round pick to the Knights to make sure they would select Fleury.
That’s hard to imagine now, that Vegas had to be bribed with a high draft pick to take Fleury. Perhaps it’s better to look at it as extortion on McPhee’s part.
The interesting part is that Fleury has emerged as the unquestioned goaltending star in Vegas after years of being questioned and doubted in Pennsylvania. That began, it seemed, almost immediately after he made the stop on Nicklas Lidstrom to cement the 2009 Cup. When the Pens blew a 3-1 series lead to the Rangers in the second round in 2014, a great deal of the blame was heaped on Fleury.
It seemed like he became unreliable for the Penguins, a little flighty perhaps, and the X-factor in their post-season efforts. Once Murray arrived on the scene, it was the end for Fleury, and it just happened that the Knights came along and the timing was right.
In Vegas, Fleury is the sun, moon and the stars. Unquestioned, and perceived as a leader. From unreliable backup to core player and possible Conn Smythe Trophy candidate in less than a year. He watched from the bench two years ago as the Pens beat the Sharks in the Cup final, so it seems a little like justice that he gets to take on the Sharks now.
He only played 46 regularseason games or he might well have been a finalist for the Vezina Trophy. Perhaps, given the situation, he should have been anyway.
If you ignore the overall story and focus on results this spring, Vegas has to be considered a serious threat to win the Cup with Fleury in net. They haven’t lost and Thursday’s demolition of San Jose, while utterly outrageous to watch while it was happening, was just more evidence of a team capable of beating anyone.
Shocked? Not any more.