Fleury was one of the worst playoff goalies in the league when the Penguins were in what should have been their peak contending years. Without Matt Murray, Fleury only has one Cup, earned 12 years ago. He is an average to above-average, steady regular-season goalie who has compiled many wins over a lengthy career, but the revisionist history about his goaltending ability is baffling.
The whitewashing of MAF's record with the Pens is totally maddening. I remember the guy getting deservedly replaced by a 36 years old Tomas Vokoun, who immediately provided stable goal tending and helped backstop the team to the ECF. For the record, Vokoun GAA was 1.5 lower that postseason, and his save% of .933 was a gigantic improvement over MAF's .883
Is MAF a nice guy? Yes. Did he have some good memories with the Pens? Yes. Was he some kind of hero? f*** no. The Pens won because someone more composed was there to take the reigns when he lost it. I get that he has some kind of magical power over some yinzers, but this should never be forgotten.
First off: Noting all goalies have bad play to a certain degree.
Second: It's not just a particular goalie either. Especially when talking about the Pens who were notoriously bad defensively for a lot of years. Much like early this year.
Third: It's easy to skip over how bad, easy it was to throw the Pens off just playing them rough and in their face, and they'd lose their minds, could not keep their composure. Players readily admitted to it, (Dupuis) even after Fleury was replaced by Vokoun. Their next opponent was a powder puff Ottawa team, so they looked powerful...(smoke an mirrors) where once they met up with a real good team, the smoke cleared and they were right back where they were before with Vokoun in net. So much they thought putting Fleury back in was going to change the fact the real problem was actually the ones in front of them with the phycological issues... All of them, the core... Crosby, Malkin, Neal, Letang, Dupuis, Kunitz.... Malkin and Neal were so triggered it didn't even take an actual hit to throw them off, just the attempt at one had them ready to unload. Crosby got thrown off in the very first game with a face wash/punch from Chara to the head (While wearing a full shield due to puck to the face) which had Crosby lose it for the rest of the series.
Is it just coincidence those line up? Nope... I think they are equally at fault. Win/lose as a team. The players will tell you so, and they have.
It took a complete outsider (sully) to get their heads out of their own butts.
Fourth: It's no secrete why the Pens went b2b, they played a brand of defense that reduced shots against so much (shot blocking) that they saw not much in the way of high danger shots against. This helped Murray immensely, they were loaded with guys "willing" to shot block. Bonino, Hagelin, Kuhnhackl, Cole, Lovejoy and I'm sure there were others. Team concept.
NYR: 10 GF in 5 games
WSH: 15 GF in 6 games
TBL: 18 goals in 7 games
SJS: 12 goals in 6 games
That's 2.29 GAA. He didn't even play the first two games vs NYR, or one vs Tampa. Heck after being out months, Fleury backstopped them to a OT loss. and was the unfortunate guy to have a puck go straight to Kucherov to tie it on a wraparound no goaltender going to stop, and a defection going off Johnsons back, again, no goaltender going to stop. It wasn't even on net. But Fleury played bad...
As much as people love the guy there's those who hate him with just the same veracity, maybe more. There's some truth to their side, but it's not to the extent they say it is. I only seen Fleury mope one time in his career, and that's due to knowing his playing days were nearing a end due to cap/ED and a younger goaltender. As much as they say Fleury wouldn't have those cups can easily be reversed, if not for Fleury they never make the playoffs in 15/16, and him not being in for the first 2 rounds vs CBJ/WSH Murray doesn't even get to play for a cup. Me, I'm happy they all were there, we have -0- cups... without them.
Murray played 21 of 24 games with an average shot total of 27.38 and there were nights it was much less than that. one reaching a low of 17 total SA. The Pens were doing that shot suppression better than anybody. Everyone was already anointing Murray the next top goalie without even looking, and it kept going through the next run of a team that changed little. Not until they started letting go of the guys doing that trait of suppressing shots did they finally realize there's a hiccup with, Murray more than a high glove issue. I warned them we should be happy if he only turns out to be another, Fleury. Whelp, at this point he's not even that...Not that he couldn't rediscover that, but a real commitment needs to be on playing solid defense. That could be said of a lot of goalies.
The answer is somewhere in the middle like almost everything. I wouldn't be taking either extremes side with any kind of truth unless I looked for myself and made my own conclusion.
This teams won a lot of games they should not have due to Fleury, Murray and a number of other goalies. They could easily be complaining about no cups since 2005.