NHL99: Marc-Andre Fleurys humor, humbleness and infectious love for hockey run deep

May 29, 2024

Welcome to NHL99, The Athletic’s countdown of the best 100 players in modern NHL history. We’re ranking 100 players but calling it 99 because we all know who’s No. 1 — it’s the 99 spots behind No. 99 we have to figure out. Every Monday through Saturday until February we’ll unveil new members of the list.

VARENNES, Que. — The long driveway is filled to the brim with trucks. Landscapers are there, putting the finishing touches on the new house, and a dock is being put in on this refreshingly breezy July day about 40 minutes southwest of Montreal.

Knowing there’d be no room to squeeze another car into the driveway, Marc-Andre Fleury is outside at the edge of his garage to greet his guest with the friendliness that has long been the signature of the jovial, gregarious man affectionately known throughout the hockey world as “Flower.”

Fleury has a stick in his hand and is fiddling with a foam puck when he spots me zigzagging past the work trucks.

“Welcome,” Fleury says, smiling wide and flashing his perfectly white teeth.

Fleury extends his right hand, then opens the door to his home: “After you.”

“Have you eaten? Can I make you a sandwich?” Fleury, with a French-Canadian accent, asks.

When I politely decline, Fleury says, “How about some water? Natural or sparkling?”

Fleury pours two glasses of San Pellegrino and grabs a peanut butter CLIF bar for himself.

He has just gotten home from a workout. There are still six days remaining on his Minnesota Wild contract after he was acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks before last season’s trade deadline. But Fleury is wearing a black Vegas Golden Knights T-shirt, left over from his four-year career there that included a Vezina Trophy and an unexpected trip to the Stanley Cup Final in the organization’s inaugural year.

“Well, it was free,” Fleury, laughing hard, says when explaining the shirt.

He opens a glass door to a back patio, then sits on a wicker couch. He crisscrosses his legs and begins petting his Goldendoodle, Fiston.

“We lost our other Golden at Christmas,” Fleury says. “It was hard on the kids. You know … they’re always there. It’s hard to lose a dog.”

Fleury looks up, takes a deep breath, then a bite of the CLIF bar. He stares through a picture-perfect canopy of green trees and toward the St. Lawrence River 100 yards away. A cargo ship that says “DULUTH, MINNESOTA” is slowly cruising west to east past his property. The ship has navigated all the way from Lake Superior through the Great Lakes and is on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.

“Peaceful, isn’t it?” Fleury says as he massages the neck of a very content Fiston.

Fleury, even at 37 and after 19 NHL seasons, still loves every minute of being a hockey player and is excited about what lies ahead. But at this moment, this is his happy place and he’s contemplating all the possibilities of what’s on that ship, where it has come from and where it may be going.

Europe? Africa? Asia? South America?

“All day, every day, those ships go by,” Fleury says. “Cool, isn’t it?”

When the super-athletic, acrobatic eventual Hall of Famer and the man who kicks off The Athletic’s NHL99 project as the 100th-best player in the NHL’s modern era isn’t stopping pucks, winning games, playing practical jokes on his teammates, hanging with his wife and playing with his three children, this is a glimpse into his life.

On this day, hours before Fleury would decide to forgo free agency and re-sign with the Wild for two years, he is relaxed, downright hospitable and reflective about where he’s come from and what he thinks his NHL legacy will be.

When reminded about his three Stanley Cup championships with the Pittsburgh Penguins, his five All-Star Game appearances, his Vezina and Jennings trophies and the fact that in NHL history only Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy have won more than his 520 regular-season and 92 playoff games, Fleury smiles, blushes and stares once more at the blue St. Lawrence River.

“It’s hard to believe,” he says. “It’s surreal. Those were my heroes.”

Fleury grew up in the small town of Sorel-Tracy, Que. — 50 kilometers from his current home.

Surrounded by cornfields and cattle farms, Fleury lived on one end of a long road. On the other end of the same road was the home of Veronique LaRose, who used to play hockey with Fleury’s younger sister, Marylene.

Fleury has known Veronique since they were in elementary school. At 14 years old, he was so shy he didn’t have the nerve to ask her to be his date at a school dance. He had his sister ask Veronique instead. They went to the dance and really began dating later in their teenage years.

This summer, Marc-Andre and Veronique celebrated their 10-year wedding anniversary after being together the 10 years before that.

Their two daughters, 9-year-old Estelle and 7-year-old Scarlett, learned to skate when Dad played in Vegas and are both hockey players. Their 3-year-old son, James, is starting to love hockey for different reasons.

“He loves going to the games because he likes popcorn and eating snacks,” Fleury says, laughing. “I’m like my dad was with me. I don’t push hockey on them. I never will. If they love it, they’ll play.”

Fleury’s dad, Andre, was a hard-working man, a carpenter who built a lot of homes in Sorel-Tracy.

“Every day, long hours,” Fleury says. “Sweating in the summer, freezing in the winter.”

Andre lost his right eye when he was 6 playing hockey. He took a stick to the face in a weekend tournament, “and back then, there was no doctor to treat him over the weekend.”

“But,” Fleury continues, “he loved hockey.”

Andre had a sense of humor about losing his eye. He’d always tell his son to keep his “eye” on the puck, pun intended. And he continued to play hockey, only he moved to right wing so he could see oncoming checkers with his left eye “so he wouldn’t get hammered,” Fleury says, laughing at the thought.

Andre died three years ago at 63 of lung cancer.

What’s so tragic about it, Fleury says, is that Andre “smoked — smoked a lot,” but when his own dad — Fleury’s grandfather — died of lung cancer, he quit cold turkey. Then years later, having not smoked all the while, Andre was diagnosed with the disease that killed his father.

“My dad took me to every practice, all the tournaments, but he never pushed me toward hockey,” Fleury says. “He always told me to just have fun and work hard. In the summer, he didn’t make me play hockey. Soccer, baseball — he was just as happy watching me play. It was good how he never pushed it on me. He just let me fall in love with it naturally.”

Allan Walsh, Fleury’s longtime agent and friend, witnessed how much the loss affected Fleury.

“His dad was very quiet and worked his ass off for his family,” Walsh says. “You could see in his eyes what Andre meant to Marc. When things weren’t going well in hockey, Marc would reach out to his dad and have a conversation, and his dad gave him advice. And it always, always made a difference.”

And then there’s Fleury’s mom, France, who has six siblings. She’s a dental hygienist, which may explain her boy’s great teeth.

(Bruce Kluckhohn / NHLI via Getty Images)

“She’s on me all the time about them,” Fleury says. “One time, after I had braces, I did a flip on a trampoline, landed on my teeth and they all caved in. I had to get braces again and she was like, ‘What are you doing to your beautiful teeth?’”

Fleury is one of the friendliest, most affable athletes in hockey. Just watch him in pregame warmups and the way he waves at fans, poses for pictures and allows fans to throw jerseys at him for autographs as he stretches.

He gets all this from his mom, who has the exact same smile as her son.

“My mom is always in a light mood, always happy, smiling, helping people,” Fleury says. “Family is big in my life. Every summer, we have a big party with all my family we don’t get to see a lot during the season.”

Fleury’s sister is two years younger. He says they fought a lot growing up, but when he left at age 14 to play midget and then 15 to go to Cape Breton for major junior, the distance brought his sister and him closer than ever. They missed each other desperately and today are as close as can be.

In fact, any chance they get, Fleury and his sister will go on the ice to play hockey.

“It’s one of my favorite things to do,” Fleury says.

If you know anything about Fleury, you know he’s one of the NHL’s biggest practical jokers.

Nobody is safe.

Former Golden Knights teammate Jonathan Marchessault says the hardest thing is Fleury’s “sneaky about it” then “denies it till he dies.”

He’s been known for cutting laces on skates and hiding in equipment bags.

Dontcha know, payback is best served with 7 rolls of clear tape! 😈

🌸 pranks longtime friend, Sidney Crosby, during the #NHLMediaTour.#mnwild pic.twitter.com/CyPgfmBknI

— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) September 20, 2022

At the 2022 NHL Media Tour, Fleury got old Penguins teammate Sidney Crosby good by taking seven rolls of tape and binding Crosby’s gear up into a ball. In 2011, Fleury was the ringleader of a famous scheme revealed on “Road to the Winter Classic” when a handful of Penguins veterans played a rookie prank on Mark Letestu and Ben Lovejoy by sneaking into their hotel room while at dinner and removing every piece of furniture and reconfiguring it in the hallway.

“I like hotel rooms,” Fleury says, smiling wryly. “You know, guys go out to dinner, you’ve got some time and you put everything in the hallway or just make a big tornado in there. I like getting in the room and messing with everything.”

Fleury has learned how to manipulate a toilet. He’ll sneak into a teammate’s hotel room, unplug the rubber refill tube in the tank, then just barely position the end of the hose so it’s resting under the lid. Inevitably, when a teammate goes to the bathroom and flushes, he’ll get pummeled with water directly to the stomach.

“And it’s not like a water pistol where it’s one spray,” Walsh says, laughing. “This lasts 20 seconds, and when you’re in an enclosed, tight hotel bathroom, there’s nowhere to go. You can’t go left, right. You can’t get out of the way. The water’s just coming at you and coming at you.”

Before Game 7 of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final, the game in which Fleury made the miraculous game-saving stop on Nicklas Lidstrom in the dying seconds, Fleury went back to the MGM Grand in Detroit after the morning skate. He was trying to take a pregame nap, but in the room next to him, several people were partying. They were loud, drinking and playing music, and the noise caused Fleury to toss and turn for two hours before the most important game of his life.

At 3:45, Fleury put on his suit, but before heading to the team bus, he took a waste basket, filled it with water, leaned it on the door of the room next to him, banged on the door, sprinted down the hallway and, just as he turned the corner, he heard the door open and somebody scream.

Yes, before Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, Fleury played an epic prank on a complete stranger in the next room.

“I remember once getting in his car and the entire car is full of giant bags of confetti,” Walsh says. “I had to sit with this massive bag of confetti on my lap that went all the way to the roof. I go, “I’ve got to ask you, what the f— is this?’ And he goes, ‘I have some plans,’ with that big Flower smile.”

In his early days in Pittsburgh, Fleury roomed with Marc Bergevin, one of the league’s biggest pranksters during his playing days. Bergevin once came back to the room at night and placed a book with an enticing title on the nightstand between their beds. The rookie threw the remote control to Bergevin, which was common in the old days. Bergevin went to the bathroom, kept the door ajar and laughed out loud when he heard his roomie scream. Fleury had picked up the book, looking at the front cover, then the back, then opened the book and got the shock of a lifetime.

Literally. Fleury was jolted by the prank book.

“Berge used to do little tricks all the time,” Fleury says. “He taught me well.”

It’s hard to believe the youthful Fleury is 37 years old and 32 victories from passing Roy for second all-time in the regular season.

Walsh remembers June 21, 2003, like it was yesterday.

The night before the draft, Walsh hosted a party with Fleury, his family and his other draft-eligible clients and family members. They had no idea what team would select Fleury.

But on draft day, Walsh received a call with a scoop. The Panthers, three years after acquiring Roberto Luongo at the 2000 draft, were planning to trade the No. 1 overall pick and another pick to the Penguins for the Nos. 3 and 55 picks and winger Mikael Samuelsson. The reason? The Penguins wanted Fleury.

Walsh was meeting Fleury in the lobby of their hotel four blocks from the arena.

“I took Flower aside and told him, ‘I have some information, but I don’t want to ruin in any way this experience for you. So if you want to be surprised, I know where you’re going and I know what team is taking you, but I don’t want to tell you unless you want to know,’” Walsh recalls. “He goes, ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me.’ I said, ‘You sure,” and he yells, ‘F—ing tell me!’

Walsh told him he was going No. 1 overall to the Penguins.

“He looked right through me, like I could actually see the different swirling thoughts going through his mind the whole time,” Walsh says. “He was speechless for 10 seconds. He finally goes, ‘Geeeeeezzzzz.’”

Fleury asked: “What do we do now?”

“I said, ‘For starters, I think we should get our ass to the rink,’” Walsh says.

During that four-block walk, Fleury got bombarded by autograph and photo seekers. It was boiling hot outside. Finally, Walsh put his hand on Fleury’s waist and ushered him along. They got to their seats 10 minutes before the draft started and were soaked with sweat from the sweltering Nashville heat.

“Marc literally had sweat dripping from his forehead and a drenched shirt when his name was called,” Walsh says.

Fleury made the Penguins as an 18-year-old, a huge jump going from major junior to the NHL. Of course, this is the same guy who jumped from bantam AA to major junior.

In his NHL debut, he stopped 46 of 48 shots in a 3-0 loss.

“Those were tough years,” says Ed Olczyk, Fleury’s first coach with the Penguins. “The plan was to rid ourselves of all of our assets — the Robert Langs and Marty Strakas — and build from the draft knowing that we had no goalies coming and no center-icemen. We knew Florida didn’t need a goalie, so Craig (Patrick) moved up to assure we got a guy we all thought we could build from the goal crease out.

“Flower was so infectious. His love of the game, his smile, his personality, his skill level, it was all there under one umbrella.”

But the Penguins were an unstable organization at that point, bleeding money and shuttling Fleury back and forth to the minors or to the 2004 world juniors, then permanently back to Cape Breton so they wouldn’t have to pay his bonuses.

“He was upset and emotional,” Olczyk remembers. “I remember him saying to me with tears in his eyes, ‘I don’t want my bonuses. You can keep them. Just let me stay.’ Those were hard conversations because I wanted him there, too.”

There was a lot of losing in those early years in Pittsburgh. But after drafting Fleury in 2003, the Penguins landed Evgeni Malkin, Crosby and Jordan Staal in the first rounds of the next three drafts.

“Those were three great players to build up the middle with, but at the beginning, we were losing a lot,” Fleury says. “That was hard because you see in the paper the No. 1 pick can’t stop a puck and is losing all the time. That’s when I learned to stop reading the paper, which was tough. All my life, my dad and me, we always got the newspaper and read all the sports in the news.”

But Fleury persevered, began winning games and helped backstop a very special Penguins team to the pinnacle.

Marc-Andre Fleury saved 4️⃣8️⃣ of 5️⃣0️⃣ shots in Games 6 & 7 of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final. 🧱 🌸 🏆#StanleyCupNBCSN | @penguins pic.twitter.com/pSpGurZo1c

— NBC Sports Hockey (@NBCSportsHockey) June 9, 2020

“At the end of the day, I just want to win,” Fleury says. “But what I’ve found out over time, when I smile, when I’m having fun, then I play better.”

Like his mom, Fleury may always be smiling, but he’s a fierce competitor. There are so many stories from Pittsburgh about his battles every practice with Crosby. But it’s his fun style on the ice and that off-ice demeanor that has allowed him to galvanize franchise bases — especially in Vegas after he willingly went there as the Golden Knights’ expansion goaltender — and why he’s so popular, so beloved, league-wide.

Just look at last season, when he won his 500th game and recorded his 69th shutout in Montreal. The Canadiens had such a bad season, it quite frankly may have been the highlight of their season when Canadiens fans serenaded Fleury in the final minute by chanting his name.

“I didn’t expect that,” Fleury says. “I mean, I grew up a Habs fan. They were always my favorite team. It was pretty amazing.”

Fleury simply loves playing hockey. It’s why he signed on for two more years with the Wild.

“When you win Cups, it’s something you always chase to do it again,” he says. “I’m just fortunate that I can still do it, to play for this long. Had some injuries, but nothing too devastating. I feel lucky. I feel like I got to do what I love for so long.”

Fleury then leads a tour of his house. In the basement, there are paintings on canvas of some of his proudest moments, as well as posters, years and years of pads and all of his masks — not just from the NHL but also from when he was a kid and in junior. There are also special ones that used to belong to Brodeur and Roy.

He also has keepsakes from his dad, who saved many pictures and newspaper articles highlighting the boy he was so proud of.

“Look at his numbers and the longevity and the success individually, the success of the teams he’s played on — part of three Stanley Cup champions. This is a slam-dunk, no-brainer Hall of Famer,” Olczyk says. “The young man that’s become a man and everything he’s been able to accomplish in the game and in his family speaks for itself. It’s hard not to like and love the guy.”

(Top photo: Chris McGrath / Getty Images)

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