All’s well; Fleury returns
Additional worry in pandemic era Goaltender back on ice after missing practices
MARC-ANDRE Fleury must feel like a professional angler trolling for bass along the Tennessee River. That much of a sure thing.
Forever known as one of (the best?) pranksters across the NHL, the Golden Knights goalie will soon travel with his team to a playoff hub in Edmonton, Alberta.
Yes. Fleury returned to the ice Friday for his first training camp practice.
You can stop hyperventilating now, Las Vegas.
Once in Edmonton, the top six Western Conference seeds will be housed at the JW Marriott as the coronavirus-generated postseason begins.
Think about it: All the down time between practices and games. All those teammates and opposing players. Fleury could play more tricks on unsuspecting sorts in one week than he has an entire career.
Just a suggestion: Should the hub have a snitch line similar to that of the NBA, where
A single skate blade touched the City National Arena ice Friday, and the entire Las Vegas Valley let out one long sigh of relief.
Marc-andre Fleury, after missing the first three practices of Golden Knights training camp, was back stopping shots and cracking jokes with teammates. His presence reintroduced Coach Pete Deboer’s toughest “problem” of the restart: Choosing a starting goaltender between Fleury and Robin Lehner.
Deboer hasn’t figured out how he’ll solve that problem. But he’s willing to get creative to take advantage of one of the NHL’S strongest goalie tandems.
“I think particularly with four months off, a short training camp and a long playoff runway, it might be even more important this year that both guys play games at
different points,” Deboer said. “It’s a great luxury for us. I’m not going to be afraid to play either. I don’t know what that will look like. Maybe it will be one guy starting the majority, maybe we’ll go back and forth. I’m really going to keep an open mind to this because of the situation and because we have two great goalies.”
Deboer doesn’t have a wrong answer now that his two main goalies are practicing. Fleury was absent for the start of camp, but Deboer insisted his absence was only because he took part in on-ice workouts for five weeks as part of Phase Two of the league’s return-to-play protocol.
Knights TV analyst and former professional goaltender Mike Mckenna said on the Review-journal’s Golden Edge podcast in May that goalies need 1½ to two weeks to get ready to play. The Knights resume play Aug. 3 against Dallas in the round robin.
“We’ve got a longer runway here than it looks,” Deboer said. “We’ve got a lot of practice time when you look at day one of camp through until we start our round-robin games. I think everyone wanted to be smart with (Fleury). He was back out there today, and he looked great.”
Lehner looked formidable for the fourth straight practice, which is what makes Deboer’s choice so
tough. Fleury is a three-time Stanley Cup winner, a franchise icon twice over and likely Hall of Famer. Yet Lehner, a Vezina Trophy finalist last season, has played too well the past two years to be dismissed.
The two make an interesting comparison because their playing styles are so different. Watching Fleury in net is like seeing a Cirque du Soleil show. He’s athletic, instinctual and uses his flexibility to make breathtaking saves.
Lehner’s game is more grounded. He’s composed, analytic and relies on his positioning and 6-foot-4-inch frame to wall off the net.
He thinks his methods, which depend on patience and intelligence, have helped his play come back quickly in camp.
“I feel good on the ice,” said Lehner, a pending unrestricted free agent. “My game is not that reliant on being overly athletic. It’s more reading plays and getting my reactions back, and I think it’s been really good so far.”
With both players performing well, Deboer has made sure to leave open his options. He pointed to the 2017 Stanley Cup-winning Pittsburgh Penguins as proof that teams don’t necessarily have to stick with one goaltender the entire way.
Fleury started 15 games that postseason, and Matt Murray, who was injured when the playoffs began, started 10, including all six Stanley Cup Final games.
The 2018 Washington Capitals are another example. They started
Philipp Grubauer in their first two playoff games before turning to Braden Holtby the rest of the way.
The Capitals went on to lift the Stanley Cup at T-mobile Arena with a five-game series win over the Knights.
“I think while there have been plenty of examples of the starter going wire-to-wire in the Stanley Cup playoffs, I think you’re seeing more of both guys contributing at different points,” Deboer said. “I think that maybe the thought process on that is changing.”
Contact Ben Gotz at bgotz@ reviewjournal.com. Follow @ Bensgotz on Twitter.