Fleury, Free Doughnuts and the Golden Pads
By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
When veteran Vegas Golden Knights goalie Marc-Andre Fleury blanked the Anaheim Ducks, 5-0, Wednesday, it was his 51st career shutout.
It also activated a business deal between the Golden Knights and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc., a Winston-Salem, NC company founded in 1937 that has about 3,200 workers at 1,400 retail stores in 32 countries.
Krispy Kreme went public from 2000-2016, but it’s now privately held by JAB Holding Company, based in Luxembourg. It sold enough doughnuts in 2016 to generate revenues of just more than half a billion dollars that year.
Business deals between doughnut makers and sports teams are hardly new. In 2008, for example, the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team had an agreement with Dunkin’ Donuts that allowed any person to receive a free doughnut the following day of a Rays win. It didn’t matter if the person attended the Rays game or not.
The Golden Knights’ attendance of 18,111 at T-Mobile Arena Wednesday night meant that if every last person went to Krispy Kreme to receive his or her free dozen doughnuts, then Krispy Kreme would give away 217,332 doughnuts.
With Fleury manning the goal for the VGK, every home game is a possibility for free Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
LVSportsBiz.com once asked Fleury about how he feels about making Las Vegas so fat thanks to all his shutouts.
“They don’t have to eat all the doughnuts,” Fleury quipped, known for his smiles, quips and shutouts.
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Fleury is also known for his gold pads that he has used during practice, but that he debuted in game action against the Ducks, along with a new mask.
LVSportsBiz.com photographer J. Tyge O’Donnell covered Wednesday’s game and filed these photos of Fleury and the golden pads.
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