Marc-Andre Fleury's Last Bloom in Pittsburgh Earned A Long-Awaited Farewell

Fleury back in black and gold, one last time. Eight saves, endless ovations, and the farewell Pittsburgh had been waiting for.

(Fleury looks on during play)

By Anthony Pellegrino @Pellegrinoap50 TheFrozenFocus.com NHL Correspondent

If you hadn’t been to a Penguins game since the summer of 2017 until tonight, the picture would look much the same.

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang still carrying the franchise into yet another season

And on this night, Marc-André Fleury once again manned the crease in Pittsburgh.

You have to go back to the beginning to grasp the impact of tonight. The Penguins had missed the playoffs for three straight years when they called Marc-André Fleury’s name first overall in 2003.

The franchise was drifting, crowds thinning at Mellon Arena, the future uncertain. A teenager from Sorel, Quebec, was asked to steady a team that felt anything but steady.

The timing would prove fateful. Two years later came Sidney Crosby, then Evgeni Malkin, then Kris Letang. The core that would redefine Pittsburgh hockey was assembled.

But long before the championships, before the parades, it was Fleury who stood in goal, taking the first steps of a revival that would stretch nearly two decades.

(Fleury walks across the draft stage in 2003)

He was acrobatic, at times reckless, the kind of goaltender who could steal a game with a lunging glove or give one back with a misplayed rebound. But he grew with the team.

Fans learned to live with the swings because they trusted the smile behind the mask, the Flower who seemed to love the game as much as he played it.

In 2009, it was Fleury sprawling across the crease to stop Nicklas Lidstrom in the dying seconds of Game 7, sealing the Penguins’ first Cup of the Crosby era.

In 2016 and 2017, when health and circumstances shifted the crease, he was still there, a steadying presence through another championship run. Three Cups, each touched by his hand in one way or another.

The end came in 2017, and it came without ceremony. From the cold math of an expansion draft when the Vegas Golden Knights entered the leauge. The Penguins chose to protect Matt Murray, and in doing so, let go of the goaltender who had grown up alongside Crosby, Malkin, and Letang.

Fleury was left exposed, and Vegas claimed him. When worst came to worse, he was gone. One night he was the Flower in Pittsburgh, the next he was the face of a brand-new franchise in the desert. The city never truly had its goodbye.

His years away told their own story. In Vegas, he carried an expansion team all the way to the Stanley Cup Final in its first season, a rebirth for a career many thought was winding down.

(Fleury as member of the Golden Knights)

He made the highlight-reel saves, he won a Vezina, and he played with the same joy that once filled Mellon Arena. Later came Chicago, then Minnesota, as the miles added up and the wins piled higher; past 500, past all but a handful of names in the history of the game.

Through it all, he was still Fleury. That's what made him so likable. He was still smiling behind the mask, but the chance for Pittsburgh to see him in its crease again felt like something that had already slipped away.

And then came tonight. On paper, it was nothing more than a preseason game in late September. The kind of game fans forget before October even arrives. But when Fleury skated down the tunnel in black and gold again, it was as if time folded in on itself.

The ovation was deafening, rising before he even touched the crease. Fans stood not for a save or a score, but for memories, for the teenager who had once carried their franchise back from the brink, for the champion who sprawled across the crease to seal a Cup,

For the man who left without a farewell.

So this time, they got to give him one. For a single night, Pittsburgh looked the way it used to. Crosby, Malkin, Letang, and Fleury in goal. Not a return to the past, but a goodbye to it. And finally, the thank you both sides had been waiting for.

Tonight was special. Any time the puck contacted Fleury, the sold-out PPG Paints Arena stood on their feet. It looked like nothing had changed. He stopped all eight shots he faced, each one met with chants of “one more year” echoing through the rafters.

(Crosby, Fleury, and Malkin line up for Anthem tonight)

Even a routine touch of the puck behind the net sent the crowd into an uproar, as if Pittsburgh was determined to savor every second left with him.

“Playing this time felt normal, like we used to be,” Fleury said afterward, grinning ear to ear.

Then, with the same candor that made him beloved, he gave the answer everyone knew was coming:

“Thank you! But I’m tired, my hips are sore. I’m going to take a little break.”

Fleury was never just another goaltender. Plenty of goalies have come and gone in Pittsburgh, and plenty more will. But few ever carried the same gravity with fans.

He wasn’t perfect he was human, and that’s why they loved him. The wild glove saves, the soft goals, the smile that never seemed to fade. Through triumph and failure, he felt like theirs.

This is what made tonight different. It wasn’t simply a preseason game, it was the closing of an era. The last link to the revival of Penguins hockey walking back into the crease where it all began.

And the ovation said what words often couldn’t. The gratitude for years when the franchise teetered and he steadied it, for Cups lifted, for memories stitched into the city’s fabric.

Goalies don’t usually get this kind of ending. Hockey doesn’t always allow for it. But Marc-André Fleury did. That’s why tonight mattered so much. It wasn’t about one more save, or one more win.

It was about something larger. Forged was the rare bond between a player and a city, and the chance, at long last, to say goodbye, together.

Mercí, Fleury. Mercí.