Marc-Andre Fleury has lost his first five starts with the Blackhawks. | Patrick McDermott/Getty Images
The veteran goalie, 0-5-0 in his first five starts with his new team, hasn’t experienced a stretch like this since the very beginning of his career.
When Marc-Andre Fleury arrived in Chicago for training camp, the first thing his new Blackhawks teammates noticed was his positivity.
But after a brutal month of awful news constantly arriving on every front, the resilience of Fleury’s positivity is being tested. One sentence from his press conference Saturday, after the Hawks’ 1-0 loss to the Blues extended their season-opening winless streak to nine games, spoke volumes about that.
“It’s been tough to keep smiling,” Fleury said.
Fleury’s beaming smile — the ultimate outward indicator of his jovial yet calm personality — made him a fan favorite during his glory days with the Penguins, then an immediate face of the new Golden Knights franchise.
So it’s a truly dire sign if it’s difficult for Fleury, of all people, to pull up that happy face each day.
“[This is] very frustrating, embarrassing,” Fleury added. “We had some hype with our team, with the new acquisitions this summer, and younger guys having a little more experience this season. We all expected more out of our team. And it’s been tough…[to] keep staying positive through it.”
For a fleeting 40 minutes Saturday, the 36-year-old goalie was at least enjoying hockey again.
He made some crucial saves at big times, helping mask the Hawks’ typical array of defensive breakdowns, and even bailed himself out of a few puck-handling mistakes. He didn’t exactly look in control — there was plenty of flailing around the crease involved in many of his stops — but he did look effective.
“Honestly, it’s the most fun I had — those first two periods — in a long time,” he said. “Just making some saves and having a 0-0 game, still having a chance to win all the way ’til the end…”
Torey Krug’s third-period goal and the Hawks’ first offensive shutout since Apr. 3 rendered Fleury’s 36 saves useless, however, and his discouragement was readily evident afterward. Not only was Fleury not smiling, but he looked genuinely pained when reflecting on his first month with the Hawks.
Hawks coach Jeremy Colliton noticed, too, how emotionally taxing this stretch has been for Fleury.
“He’s a really good pro,” Colliton said. “[He has] a ton of pride and puts a lot of pressure on himself to play at a high level. He’s done a lot of winning in his career, so he wants to win. Like everyone else, he’s frustrated, wants more, feels we’re capable of more.”
Through his first five Hawks starts, Fleury is 0-5-0 with an .872 save percentage, which actually increased from .839 on Saturday.
And in terms of Goals Saved Above Average, a holistic stat that measures goalie performance versus expected values, Fleury ranks 53rd out of 54 eligible goalies NHL-wide at minus-6.16 goals saved. His Hawks partner, Kevin Lankinen, sits 52nd at minus-4.59. Only the Coyotes’ Carter Hutton, with his absurd minus-10.0 mark entering Sunday, prevents the Hawks’ duo from singlehandedly occupying the league basement.
Fleury needed to think all the way back to his first two NHL seasons to recall another stretch as difficult as this. The 2003-04 Penguins lost 18 straight, and the 2005-06 Penguins lost 17 of 18 during one stretch. Fleury remembered a veteran player urging those teams to just keep forging ahead.
Now, Fleury is trying to drum up similar advice to pass on to the 2021-22 Hawks.
“Every time you go through such a tough time, the confidence gets a little lower, guys take mistakes a little harder, guys want to do a little more, myself included,” he said. “Sometimes we get a couple goals, and then maybe it’s a bad bounce or something, and I feel like we get down a bit.
“We have to find ways to stay upbeat and keep pushing for 60 minutes and still believe we can come back and win.”
