With Retiring Fleury Back In Vegas, VGK Play Strong Game In 4-1 Win Over Minnesota Before Announced 17,929 Sunday
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Story by Alan Snel Photos by Hugh Byrne
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Marc-Andre Fleury made life fun in Las Vegas where he led a bunch of Misfits to an unlikely journey to the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup Final in the 2017-18 season.
Back in the Vegas Golden Knights’ early days, the team had a donut promotion with Krispy Kreme that involved fans at VGK home games where if the Knights shut out the opponent fans would get a free dozen donuts.
After Fleury whitewashed a few foes at T-Mobile Arena, I joked with Fleury that he was making people fat in Las Vegas.
“They don’t have to eat all 12 donuts,” Fleury cracked to me.
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At 40 years old, Fleury is calling it quits at the end of the 2024-25 season. He’s the backup to Filip Gustavsson and both are having nice seasons as the Minnesota Wild have 58 points entering tonight’s game with the Golden Knights.
The VGK sit atop the Pacific Division with 59 points, with Winnipeg having the most points in the conference with 61.
The Vegas Golden Knights said goodbye to Flower with a nice scoreboard tribute midway through period one.
In June 2017, Fleury was the biggest name player plucked by the Golden Knights from the other NHL teams in the expansion draft here at T-Mobile Arena. When I covered the expansion draft, I decided to walk behind the scrum at the Fleury expansion draft presser to get a wider picture. Here it is:
Less than four months later, a gunman massacred 58 people at a country music festival on the Strip Oct. 1, 2017 and the Golden Knights helped locals cope with this county’s deadliest mass shooting.
I recall that two days later on Oct. 3, 2017 the Golden Knights were at a blood donation center on Charleston Boulevard in the west valley. A woman named Courtney Oldenburg who was at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival with her boyfriend heard the rapid-fire pop-pop-pop of assault rifle bullets flying by her when she tried to figure out where the gunfire was coming from.
“The thing I remember most was my boyfriend pushing me to the ground and telling him I love him and wondering if those were the last words I would ever say,” Oldenburg told the VGK players, including Fleury. Here’ a photo from that scene.
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You can’t talk about Fleury without his famed “Superman” save against Toronto in Nov. 2019.
The VGK marketing folks used the save to create a giveaway of a Fleury figure in the superman flying position at a game.
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Fleury did not play tonight.
And Minnesota took a 1-0 lead in the first period on a goal by Ryan Hartman, who fired the puck past VGK goalie Adin Hill on a two-on-one break.
In period two, Pavel Dorofeyev scored his 15th on a wicked wrister to lock the game at one apiece.
And in period three, Keegan Kolesar picked up loose change in front of the Minnesota and backhanded a goal for a VGK 2-1 lead.
Tomas Hertl added a five-on-five goal later in the third period to salt away the win with the 3-1 lead. Hertl then did some nice work along the boards, feeding Mark Stone who set up Dorofeyev for his team-leading 16th goal of the season.
That was your final in front of Fleury, who sat and watched: Vegas 4 Minnesota 1.
Chants of “Fleury, Fleury, Fleury,” sounded in the arena in the game’s final minute as Vegas snapped a two-game losing streak and upped its record to 29-11-3 and 61 points.
LVSportsBiz.com asked VGK coach Bruce Cassidy if he had any fun Fleury stories. Cassidy he never coached Fleury, but did bump into Flower at a men’s bathroom while traveling. Cassidy joked that Fleury, always the jokester, did not play any pranks on him.
