Coming Home

Announced on Friday by the Pittsburgh Penguins, it seems that one of their top netminders of all-time will finally return home. Many fans will argue that it's happening far later than it should have, but, as they say, it's better late than never. Marc-Andre Fleury officially signed a professional tryout contract with the Penguins on Friday in order to play with the team on September 27 against the Columbus Blue Jackets before everyone officially expects him to retire from hockey. The 40 year-old netminder holds nearly every Penguins goaltending record, and it feels oh-so-right to have Fleury back where he started in a Penguins crease for one more night.

I'm not going to wax poetic about Fleury's career or accolades as those can be found all over the internet. What I will do, though, is tell you about the time I witnessed an early-in-his-career Fleury get pulled from a game that I was attending. This game has no other fantastical statistics to report from this mid-Janury game evening in Kanata, Ontario excpet that it was my first time seeing Fleury stop pucks live, and it only lasted for slightly more than forty minutes.

I'll take you back to January 22, 2004 and the Pittsburgh Penguins were going through a complete rebuild after losing players like Mario Lemieux, Alexei Kovalev, and Martin Straka from their previous year's team. Entering the game against the Ottawa Senators that night, the Penguins were 11-29-5-3 as they arrived at the Corel Centre. Former Penguins standout Patrick Lalime got the nod for the Senators while the Penguins started 2003 first-overall pick Marc-Andre Fleury!

It was clear that the speed and skill of the Senators might be a major problem all night for the Penguins with Martin Havlat, Marian Hossa, Radek Bonk, and Daniel Alfredsson flying around the ice. My cousins, who accompanied me to the game, were Senators fans thanks to growing up near Ottawa, so I heard a lot of chirping and taunts all the way to the arena. Nevertheless, my hope that the Penguins could steal a win from a solid Ottawa team remained strong.

8:49 into the game, I was one of the lone voices cheering as Milan Kraft (remember him?) snapped a shot past Lalime for the 1-0 lead, but that celebration was short-lived as the Senators' Alfredsson responded 4:13 later with a wrist shot that Fleury could not stop to make it a 1-1 game. The Penguins would retake the lead 1:05 later as Drake Berehowsky's slapshot from the point found enough room to hit twine at 14:05, and the Penguins went up 2-1. That's when Martin Havlat took over as he tipped in a shot at 16:40 before adding a wrister at 18:14 off to put Ottawa up 3-2 through 20 minutes of play.

Cue the chirps from my party about this rookie goalie allowing three goals on twelve shots, but I vowed he'd be better in the second period with some added defensive help. After all, letting Alfredsson and Havlat have clear looks at the net would be suicide for any team, so I clung to the hope that the Penguins would make good on my promise. Deep down, I feared it could get much worse.

Just 19 seconds into the middle frame, Peter Schaefer made it 4-2 for Ottawa on a wrist shot. The Penguins would get one back on the power-play when Tom Kostopoulos deflected a Drake Berehowsky shot past Lalime at 9:47, but the Penguins suffered the same late-period fate as they did in the first period. Schaefer scored his second goal of the period on a wrister at 16:44, and Josh Langfeld zipped a shot past Fleury with 33 seconds to play for the 6-3 lead after two periods.

The second intermission was fairly quiet when it came to chirps, and I think it was pretty clear that the Senators had a solid hold on the game. I joked that the Penguins had rallied from a three-goal deficit before, but I had zero evidence that the 2004 squad had ever done that. In fact, I'm not even sure they had scored six goals in one game all season (Narrator: they had not). I may have been asking a lot, but they could score three goals in one period, right?

To my party's surprise, it was Jean-Sebastien Aubin in the Penguins' crease to begin the third period as head coach Ed Olczyk closed the book on Fleury and his yellow pads' night. His final stats line showed him stopping 17 of 23 shots he faced for a .739 save percentage, and he would be the goalie of record when this night finally ended. It be noted that Brian Holzinger scored shorthanded 2:29 into the third frame to make it 6-4, Zdeno Chara and Steve McKenna dropped the gloves early in the third period, and Dick Tarnstrom scored on the power-play with 2:22 to play to make it 6-5, but the Penguins would fall by that 6-5 score as the Senators improved to 26-12-7-3.

I don't remember the goals that went in as much as I remember the bright yellow pads being kicked out to stop pucks. I recall Fleury battling to see through screens set by players like Chris Neil and Jason Spezza, and his incredible lateral movement as he slid from post to post to stop goals. It was very evident that he had a ton of raw talent, but the team in front of him had significant defensive deficiencies when it came to helping Fleury succeed.

Seeing Fleury play for 39:59 on this night still stands out as a highlight for me as a fan. Eight days after this game, Marc-Andre Fleury was back in the QMJHL with the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles as the Penguins returned him to his junior team as the Penguins avoided paying him a $3 million bonus for hitting the 25-game mark. Fleury would end that 2003-04 season with a 4-14-2 record, a 3.64 goals-against average, and .896 save percentage as that 14th loss against the Senators would be his last appearance that season.

Did I have any clue that would be Fleury's last game in the NHL until October 10, 2005? Not in the slightest despite the Penguins being on shaky financial ground. What I did see that night was a solid 19 year-old netminder who played behind a patchwork Penguins defence against a very good Ottawa Senators team. Fleury showed flashes of brilliance in his 40 minutes of work, but the Senators were simply too much on that January 22, 2004 night. And while he didn't earn the win that night, he would add 371 more wins in his Penguins career to go along with the four he earned in that 2003-04 season.

As we walked to the car through the cold, crisp January air, it never occurred to me that this game against the Senators would be Fleury's last NHL game that season. Through the honks of jubilant Senators fans in cars and the cheers from fans passing them by, it felt like I had been witness to a player who could be a building block for the Penguins' return to glory in the NHL. Coincidentally, it would be one year and seven months to the day - July 22, 2005 - when the Penguins won the NHL Draft Lottery and the right to select Sidney Crosby.

It was pretty clear that the Penguins had a special player on their hands from my view in the nosebleed seats that night, and those incredible yellow pads were a delight to watch as Fleury tried in vain to stop a very good Senators team. Having Fleury back in a Penguins uniform for one preseason game before he officially hangs the skates up completes the circle. My hope is that he sports the yellow pads one last time so that today's fans get that same Fleury experience!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!