Vegas Golden Knights: Takeaways from Fleury’s NHL Conference Call

Life without hockey and the Vegas Golden Knights continues but Marc-Andre Fleury was able to help satisfy our cravings today.

Due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, the Vegas Golden Knights and the rest of the NHL are currently on lockdown.

The rest of the sports world is also on hiatus and for those of us who are hockey mad in particular, it can be hard to not have our favorite sport on tap to keep us distracted during these strange and scary times.

However, and thanks in large to a brilliant idea from the NHL, we have been able to hear from some of our heroes over the last coupe of days.

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Staging four conference calls with the media, four players from all four divisions in the NHL engaged with the media and shared their views on a number of topics.

Today was the return of the Pacific Division and, judging from the snippets that were posted out, the full conference call will be must-watch viewing when it is posted on nhl.com later.

Golden Knights goalie Marc-Andre Fleury was in good spirits, as was San Jose Sharks Captain Logan Couture, Anaheim Ducks forward Ryan Getzlaf and LA Kings Center Anze Kopitar.

All four players gave candid thoughts on life without hockey, in addition to providing some light relief by taking gentle and lighthearted digs at each other.

We rounded up some of the best takeaways from what Fleury had to say…

Home Life Is Tough

Marc-Andre Fleury is being kept busy at home during the hiatus and he was quick to admit that home life isn’t all it is cracked up to be.

With young children, Fleury revealed that he is now going to bed more tired than what he did when he was playing.

I’m sure many parents can relate to that.

Fleury’s Message To Fans

We’ll delve into some more lighthearted stuff shortly, but Fleury ended the conference call with this really heartfelt message to Golden Knights fans:

“Thank you for the support, look after yourself and your family, stay healthy, stay safe and that’s all that matters.

“We’ll play hockey at some point, we don’t know when, but we’re looking forward to seeing you guys in the stands.”

These are scary times for us all and having our comforts such as sports taken away from us has also been hard, but to hear Fleury reassure us all was comforting to say the least.

Fleury Demands Respect

There was some really good chemistry between Kopitar, Getzlaf, Couture and Fleury, and both Getzlaf and Couture revealed their admiration for Fleury.

Couture called Fleury “one of the best athletic goalies” he’s seen, while Getzlaf admitted that he gets annoyed by Fleury because the future Hall of Famer is never out of a play.

Then, to cap off what was an entertaining call, Getzlaf yelled out “and he took your coach!” while Couture was waxing lyrical about Fleury.

It was of course referring to former San Jose Sharks Head Coach Peter DeBoer now being behind the bench for the Golden Knights, and it was a really funny moment and one that was needed today.

Keeping Busy

We are all trying to keep busy in self-isolation and it is pretty interesting to see what some of the stars in the NHL are getting up to.

And Fleury revealed that when he is not building trampolines for his children, he is starting to get into Making A Murderer on Netflix.

Now, I have binged both seasons and I can safely say that I don’t think Fleury will be disappointed with the true crime documentary.

Also, Fleury is still getting his work in too by roller skating around the neighborhood with the stroller, getting out on the bike and using his wife’s Pilates table.

Good work.

Fleury Wants Regular Season Back

There are a boatload of ideas floating around at the moment regarding to what hockey will exactly look like when it does return.

At the moment, it seems most feasible that we could jump straight into the postseason due to tight time constraints, but Fleury made clear his feelings on that:

“The biggest thing as a goalie is timing. The speed of the game is something you have to catch up on, so it would be nice to play some regular season games before starting the playoffs.”

While I agree with Fleury in principle, I just can’t see the league being able to resume the regular season due to the fact that we are nearly in April already.

Fleury picks Schmidt

When asked the teammate he would want to be quarantined with, and you can check out our feature on that same subject matter here, Fleury picked Schmidt.

And there was a simple reason for that:

“He has so much energy. I feel like he would get the kids tired and I could just relax a little bit.”

Judging by Schmidt’s activity on Instagram, he certainly has more than enough energy to burn right now.

And, finally, arguably the biggest thing to come out of the conference call was the fact that Anaheim Ducks forward Ryan Getzlaf had built his own chicken coop.

And it was incredible.

Life without hockey, hey.

*All quotes per Jesse Granger of The Athletic.