Marc-Andre Fleury Helps Golden Knights Defeat Penguins

Goalie Marc-Andre Fleury played on three Pittsburgh Penguins Stanley Cup Champion teams, including last season’s winner, but his goals against average bumped up to a career high of 3.02 in the ’16-’17 season, and the Penguins decided to make him available in the expansion draft for the new Las Vegas franchise. Matt Murray had filled in well as a backup and also when Fluery had been injured, so the team decided to go in that direction should Fleury be selected in the draft.

Fleury was indeed selected by the Vegas Golden Knights (somewhere along the line the “Las” has been lost) and was the goalie in the Golden Knights’ first ever NHL game, a 2-1 victory over the Dallas Stars on October 6th. He began the year 3-1 but suffered a concussion mid way through October and missed 25 games.

On December 14th, Vegas hosted the Penguins for the first ever meeting of those two teams, and Fleury was in the nets for the Golden Knights. With his successor Murray in goal for Pittsburgh, Fleury had 24 saves for Vegas as the Golden Knights beat the Penguins 2-1. Murray also had 24 saves for Pittsburgh.

Fleury improved his record to 4-1-1 with a 2.13 goals against average and .934 save percentage. The Golden Knights will play in Pittsburgh February 6th, which should be a bit of an emotional homecoming for both Fleury and the Penguins fans.

With the win, Vegas improved to 20-9-2, (42 points) good for second place and just one point behind the Pacific Division leading Los Angeles Kings. They also have the fourth best record in the entire Western Conference, behind Nashville and St. Louis (both at 44 points ) and the Kings. That’s very unexpansion team like. We’ll see how that holds up as the long season moves along. In the next five weeks, the Golden Knights have games against Tampa Bay (twice), Washington, the Kings, Toronto, St. Louis, and Nashville (twice).