Vegas Golden Knights: Debut joy, Martinez red hot, other takeaways
3. Vintage Fleury
Much has been written and much has been made of Marc-Andre Fleury’s struggles for a chunk of this year.
It is hardly a secret that the goaltending in Vegas has been subpar across the board, and Fleury not being at his best hasn’t helped that.
Granted, this has been a tough year for Fleury who lost his father before Christmas and that is going to have a severe impact on anyone.
In addition, a less than stellar blueline hardly helped Fleury’s cause and the fact he has been regularly hung out to dry by his defense has played into the goalie’s struggles.
However, you can’t contain greatness for long and Fleury is starting to become vintage Fleury once again.
And he produced the kind of performance that will be played when he goes into the Hockey Hall of Fame, completely stifling the Edmonton Oilers.
With the Oilers absolutely running riot in the first period, Fleury stood on his head and made a plethora of stunning stops to keep his team in the game.
He absolutely robbed Leon Draisaitl with a sublime pad save, before going on to pull off two more stops in a stunning sequence.
Fleury stopped all 29 shots that were fired at him and it was a real heroic performance from the 35-year-old, who secured the 61st shutout of his career while he leads the NHL in that category over the last two years with a grand total of 13.
It has been a dominant stretch for Fleury who is 5-0-0 in his last five starts with a .942 Save Percentage and a 1.60 Goals Against Average.
Next. Grading the Carrier extension. dark
If the Vegas Golden Knights are going to make a deep postseason run then they will need Marc-Andre Fleury to be at his very best, so this current run is incredibly encouraging to say the least.