An about-face on the face of a franchise
Marc-Andre Fleury is gone and there are hard feelings. But what this will ultimately be about is what Vegas plans to do with its newfound cap space and how badly Fleury wants to be an Olympian
“I saw him in the elevator…and I said, ‘You know, you’re going to retire here.’ And he said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘You’re going to retire here. This is where you’re going to be. You’re going to get to learn to love Vegas and Vegas is going to love you.’ I feel like I made a commitment to him at that point.”
– Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley on the Cam and Strick Podcast in February, 2021, recalling a conversation with Marc-Andre Fleury early in the team’s first season
Hey, things change. As Vegas Golden Knights GM Kelly McCrimmon said, it’s easy to sit on your hands and let time pass by without doing what you can to help your hockey team. You know what else is easy? Picking up the phone. That’s easy. When McCrimmon says the rumors of a Marc-Andre Fleury trade hit Twitter before he could make the controversial deal with the Chicago Blackhawks official, he’s got a point. When he says he would never inform a player that a deal is done until it’s registered, well OK. But we’re also talking about an athlete McCrimmon acknowledged, “was the most popular player I’ve ever seen in sports.”
With that in mind, you do one of two things: you either (a) do a better job of keeping a lid on things, or (b) you make an exception and make that call before things explode on social media. This isn’t the first time a Vegas player has been caught by surprise about being dealt. Just ask Erik Haula and Nate Schmidt about that.
Here are some facts. Fleury did not have a no-move clause in his most recent deal with the Golden Knights, which has one year to go with a $7 million cap hit. At some point this season, he submitted a list of 10 teams to which he would refuse a trade. The Blackhawks were not on that list. Nor were the Philadelphia Flyers, Toronto Maple Leafs and New Jersey Devils, who also made inquiries about his availability. In speaking with McCrimmon from the June 29 exit meetings until the deal was made, Fleury made it clear he didn’t want to go to any of those places, or anywhere else for that matter. He thought he had a tacit agreement with the owner that he would not be dealt, and if he were, it would be to a destination of his choosing. But like we said, things change.
When it comes to doing things by the book, the Vegas Golden Knights did nothing wrong. When it comes to treating your franchise icons with respect and doing the right thing, they did nothing right. That’s the best way to put it. So McCrimmon will wear the black hat here and he’ll do it with a sudden windfall of $7 million in cap space. The Golden Knights are more flush with cap freedom today, but it’s debatable whether they’re actually a better team. And what is also debatable is whether or not a team that treats players the way it treated Fleury has the top-down leadership to deliver a championship. Discuss that one among yourselves.
When all this blows over and the dust settles, we’ll be able to fully digest the fact that the reigning Vezina Trophy winner was just dealt for a 23-year-old prospect that McCrimmon has already basically said has no future in the organization. But it won’t be about who told whom what, and about how much in the loop Fleury actually was throughout the process. It won’t be about whether Fleury would still be a Golden Knight if not for a monumental gaffe that giftwrapped Game 3 of the Stanley Cup semifinal to the Montreal Canadiens, who would go on to beat Vegas in six games. It won’t even be about an awkward goaltending situation that was created by the Golden Knights the moment they acquired Robin Lehner, or how it always seemed the coaching staff and management had more confidence in Lehner than Fleury. In fact, had Lehner not been hurt much of this season, it’s doubtful Fleury would have been given the opportunity to turn in the best individual season of his career.
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Ultimately, this will be about two things.
The first is what the Golden Knights will do with this cap space they now have. And they plan to do something in the short-term, otherwise they would have simply allowed Fleury to play out the last year of his contract. According to capfriendly.com, the Golden Knights have about $12.2 million in cap space to get Alec Martinez signed, take care of restricted free agent Nolan Patrick and find a reliable backup goalie.
But still, there has to be something bigger in their plans. You don’t suffer the blowback of casting away a franchise icon, one who was just named the best goalie in the NHL, if you don’t have a plan to tangibly make yourself better. And the Golden Knights need to get better. You are never going to win, particularly in the Western Conference, when Chandler Stephenson is your No. 1 center. Getting Brett Howden and Patrick are nice little additions to your bottom six, but if the Golden Knights want to win a Stanley Cup, they’re going to need a No. 1 center.
Pending unrestricted free agent Ryan Getzlaf used to be that, but that’s not going to cut it. Neither is Phillip Danault. Do the Golden Knights throw themselves into the Jack Eichel Sweepstakes? Do they take the bold step of tendering an offer sheet to Elias Pettersson? This cannot be stressed enough – if you’re going to go through all this trouble, you have to go big.
The second is, what this will come down to is how badly Fleury wants to play in the Olympics and have the chance to add a gold medal to his list of accomplishments. The Golden Knights certainly knew this and almost certainly used this as leverage. If Fleury plays, there is simply no way he isn’t part of Canada’s entry. Depending on the health of Carey Price, he stands a shot at being the No. 1 man. If he wants that badly enough, he’ll either have to go to Chicago or somewhere else on his own, or uproot his family for at least one year. Perhaps a repatriation to Pittsburgh is a possibility, although it has been four years since he played there and the ties to the Penguins are getting more tenuous. Fleury’s oldest child was just four years old when the family left for Vegas. Pittsburgh means nothing to them.
But Fleury is going to have to play somewhere if he wants to participate in the Olympics, collect the remaining $6 million owed to him on his contract and have any chance of signing another one. Fleury doesn’t want to go anywhere. He doesn’t want to uproot his young family and he’s upset at the way he was treated. Perhaps he’ll simply refuse to report to Chicago and retire, then get inducted into Hockey Hall of Fame in 2024. But Fleury is a competitor first and foremost, and the Blackhawks are banking on that being enough.
It's been a wild ride over the last few days seeing just how much organizations don't care about the human element. Between what unfolded in Chicago, the Habs, and now this..