Time to Face the Truth About Marc-Andre Fleury

Despite what you read here or anywhere else today, Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury is still a very good hockey player and by all accounts, a pretty OK person.

He was the first overall pick in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft. In regular season play he owns a career .910 save percentage and a 2.63 goals against average playing for a team that has left him out to dry more often than your grandmother’s Sunday best. Fleury has also won a Stanley Cup.

With that out of the way, it’s clear he can’t be trusted in pivotal playoff situations anymore. When it comes right down to it, mental lapses have been a part of his makeup for a very long time – just look at his career .903 save percentage in the postseason. For whatever reason, when the clock is ticking down and the game is in his hands, he crumples it up into a ball and hits a trash-can trey from the parking lot.

Last night he went to play a puck behind his own net just 22.5 seconds away from backstopping Pittsburgh to a 3-1 series lead over the Blue Jackets. He flubbed it. After he said it jumped over his stick and ended up being a gift for Brandon Dubinsky in front.

Whatever.

It was awful – and you knew what was coming next. Just 2:49 seconds into overtime, a 55-foot wrister from Nick Foligno somehow found its way between Fleury’s pads and into the Pittsburgh net. The game was over and now, the series has just begun.

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Fleury’s supporters will say it was two bad breaks at unfortunate times, which is fair. Those sort of plays can and have happened to every goalie in the world. Fleury supporters will say he was the best player through most of Game 4, which is probably true too.

That doesn’t get Fleury off the hook here though.

The Penguins had a 3-0 lead and took their foot off the gas, but Fleury couldn’t shut the door. Columbus’ first goal was stoppable and he had no chance on the second. The third goal is where the problem lies.

Fleury has coughed up pucks and blown leads throughout his career – even back to his epic fail against Team USA in the World Juniors. That one last night though? That was really bad.

Fleury comes out behind the net to play the puck with one hand on his stick when the Blue Jackets are barrelling in after the dump in. For one thing, he would have been better off staying in his crease in the first place, but if you’re going to come out, you make sure you have two hands on the stick and get it around the boards hard to beat the pressure. Instead, everything fell apart and Dubinsky pushed the game to overtime.

From there you’d hope Fleury bounced back, but we’ve seen how this story ends too many times. A harmless-looking wrist shot from Foligno gets through the Pittsburgh defenseman and then makes its way past Fleury. Game over.

The Penguins have handled Fleury with kid gloves for years. They know he’s sensitive. They’ve invested oodles of money in sports psychologists – and now this?

After the game team president Mario Lemieux made a point of visiting his goaltender in the dressing room to give him a vote of confidence. But at what point do you lose all confidence in him?

This is a team that doesn’t trust its goaltender late in games, it’s that simple. This is also a team that isn’t great defensively and has trouble holding leads no matter who is in goal – which makes this a marriage between Fleury and the Penguins a match made in hell.

Maybe he goes to a defensive-minded team down the road and takes them to the promised land, but at this point, don’t bet on that being the Penguins.

They’ve just seen too much of this. Really, haven’t we all?

The Pittsburgh Penguins are at +730 to win the Stanley Cup.