Marc-Andre Fleury: Motherlover
Does it bother Marc-Andre Fleury that when you Google images of his mom a picture of Jim Carrey in The Mask pops up? Probably not. It didn’t bother him when she smacked a good luck smooch on his skinny little cheek after arriving at Mellon Arena for Game 6 either.
Apparently it didn’t bother him when his team trailed 3-2 in the Stanley Cup Final – as the ensuing two games would tell us, at least – and why would it? One suspects it may have irked him to give up five goals in an embarrassing Game 5 loss at the Joe Louis Arena, but at least now we know that he doesn’t have a tendency to dwell.
For hockey fans, Marc-Andre Fleury is more than just a young goaltender on a young championship team. He’s a francophone celebrity, a former first overall draft pick and the anchor of the most promising franchise the NHL has seen in years. He’s also the major reason why it’s hard to hate the Pittsburgh Penguins.
For Canadians, he doubles as an ex-World Junior and the one who back in 2004 banked a clearing attempt off one of his own players and into his net, costing both his team and his country a gold medal. While the brunt of a nation wept like a herd of heartsick sea whales, Fleury (in now-typical fashion) shrugged it off and got back to work. Five years later, he now lays claim to his own little slice of real estate on Stanley’s Cup.
As one of the latest in a long line of Quebec-born NHL netminders, Fleury has his work cut out for him in terms of legend and legacy. His diving super-save in the final seconds of last Friday’s Game 7 is just one of many ways he’s gone about marking his place in the game. But what ultimately makes Fleury stand out from the rest of the professional pack is his role with the Penguins and his contribution to their most recent chapter in history.
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Alongside Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, Fleury helps lead a team poised to find its way into the sport’s record books as a legitimate champion and potential dynasty. Much like his two aforementioned teammates, Fleury is young and competent, but unlike each of them he has no perceived social drawbacks.
Whereas Malkin, a Russian-born legend playing a Canadian game in western Pennsylvania, will never truly see his name carry the marketability of a North American athlete, Crosby is too far gone down the other extreme. The former goes foolishly unnoticed while the latter unwillingly offends those who doubt his worth as a player and captain.
Fleury, on the other hand, is a more relatable personality, at least for the masses of hockey fans in Canada and the United States. He’s a more easily-digested representative of the franchise that will make life miserable for everyone else in the Eastern Conference over the course of the next 10 years. The farther the Penguins go, the easier it is to appreciate him.
He’ll never pass Crosby or Malkin in terms of true popularity or value, but will likely stand alone as the one man that even the nastiest of Pens haters can’t help but respect. If this year’s Stanley Cup is any indication, Fleury will never have to be the best player on the ice in order for his team to stay competitive – the two before him on the salary chart will happily share that honour – but he will never go unnoticed.
It’s his mortal presence in an immortal story that makes us admire the little things he does and how naturally he does them. His success isn’t off-putting nor too complicated to fully understand because we know (and we’ve seen) that parts of him are very much human. He dutifully fills his role behind the scenes but not off stage, and most importantly, he gives credence to the fact that even heroes need a little luck from mom.
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