Would The Vegas Golden Knights Be Better With Marc-Andre Fleury
By Ant Barberio
Even as a lifelong New Jersey Devils fan I still have a soft spot for the Vegas Golden Knights. That comes from a love for the city itself that started even before Gary Bettman announced them as the league’s 31st team. That’s reason enough not to accuse me of being a “bandwagoner”.
From the east coast, I’ve been paying attention to Vegas’s early-season struggles. When I brought it up to someone, they responded with “well they never should have gotten rid of Marc-Andre Fleury!” Losing the face of the franchise and the reigning Vezina winner was shocking, especially considering Vegas got nothing in return (okay, they got a minor leaguer and cap relief, but in the eyes of the fan base that is an intangible return). Is losing Fleury what really set the team back?
We could compare Fleury to current Vegas number one netminder Robin Lehner to get an answer, but that’d be an imperfect comparison. Before Tuesday night’s game against the Colorado Avalanche, Lehner has a slight edge with a 3.28 goals-against average and a .904 save percentage. Compare that to Fleury’s 5.75 goals-against average and .839 save percentage. Obviously, neither of them are playing up to their standards. In Fleury’s defense, he’s playing behind an absolutely awful Chicago Blackhawks defense. Not helping Fleury’s case is the fact Chicago is in the bottom half of shots allowed per game (19th place in the NHL to be exact.)
Vegas sent off their reigning Vezina winner to the Chicago Blackhawks. Even if the season is young, Vegas hasn’t been winning as many games as expected.
If you want to point a finger at any one aspect of the Golden Knights game look no further than the power play. The Golden Knights are the only NHL team yet to score a power-play goal this season. Remember the Golden Knights were terrible on specialty teams in last year’s playoffs as well. That’s often looked at as a reason they fell, once again, in the conference final (even if it was called something different last year).
In the almost two years with Peter DeBoer as their head coach, Vegas has been a mixed bag on the power play. The season where DeBoer took over saw Vegas have a top ten power play at 22%, good enough for 9th place in 2019-2020. Last season Vegas took a major step back dropping all the way down to 27th place in the NHL. In Vegas’s defense, they are 30th in power-play opportunities. Vegas has only been given a man advantage 11 times in 5 games. That includes on 5 on 3 opportunities. All of those stats were prior to Tuesday’s game against Colorado. Even though Vegas won, they still didn’t score a power-play goal.
Vegas isn’t even playing in close games. All four of their losses have been by two goals or more. Three of those games save them score at least three goals. Lehner has started all five games, only giving up the crease after getting pulled after two periods against the Los Angeles Kings. You would assume if Marc Andre Fleury was still around that crease would have shared a little more evenly, perhaps to better results.
Every Golden Knights fan would have loved the dynamic duo of Lehner and Fleury to continue their Jennings-winning work. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. It’s impossible to pinpoint what effect Fleury might have had on this team. Looking at those multi-goal losses where Vegas scored multiple goals as well however only makes you wonder.