Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury is thrilled to have etched his name on the Stanley Cup for a second time, but he's hoping to play a greater role in team success next season.
The 31-year-old is heading into his 13th season with the Penguins, and he's ready to regain his role as full-time starter after losing the job to rookie Matt Murray, and rumors this offseason of a potential trade.
"I love Pittsburgh, and the Penguins are my team; I want to stay with them for the rest of my career," Fleury said, according to NHL.com's Robert Laflamme. "I had some good conversations with management after the season. Nothing is written in stone. I want to come to camp ready to win my job back. I have to get back to the same level of play and help the team win games."
Fleury backstopped the Penguins to a 35-17-6 record, with a .921 save percentage and 2.29 GAA during the regular season, but a late-season concussion and shaky return to the net forced the club to start Murray throughout the playoffs.
Fleury, in turn, made sure to aid the team in any way he could, primarily by keeping his teammates loose.
"It's a different feeling when you're sitting on the bench, you're not sweating, you're not battling with your teammates to win the Cup," Fleury said. "Having said that, I'm happy to have my name on it a second time.
"I did my best to keep everyone upbeat and in a better mood around the team. I wanted to play, but that was the situation. The team was winning. The most important thing for me was to be a good teammate."
Fleury enjoyed his day with Lord Stanley in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec on Saturday. A day that included eating cereal out of the cup with his daughters, a parade through town, and a stop at Montreal Children's Hospital. All of which likely eases the pain of a lost job between the pipes.
The older Sidney Crosby gets, the older you get. It's math. Or science. Both, maybe.
The Pittsburgh Penguins superstar turned 29 on Sunday. Seriously. Now only a year shy of 30, there's no better time to reflect on what has so far been a storybook career.
Here are 29 random thoughts and observations on No. 87 on his 29th birthday:
1. No one is allowed to call him "Sid the Kid" anymore. It's over. He's a man. Accept it.
2. Not only was Crosby born in 1987, he was born on Aug. 7. So, yeah, 08/07/1987. Symmetry.
3. Have you ever met a hockey fan who said, "I don't like Sidney Crosby"? Sorry, but Philadelphia Flyers fans don't count. Let's face it, he's mostly perfect.
4. Sports and fandom are irrational, so I suppose not everyone has to like Crosby. But this is for sure: you have to respect him.
5. Crosby's birthday, during the quietest days of the offseason, is the perfect time to sit down quietly and look at the back of his hockey card (or visit his Hockey Reference page). And it's something, yeah. The 2015-16 season was his 11th in the NHL, somehow. They were right: the children do grow up so fast. Crosby's played in over 70 games in seven of those seasons, recording 100-or-more points in five of them.
6. It's easy for forget, because it was so long ago, but Crosby had 220 points in his first 160 games in the NHL, as an 18- and 19-year-old. Ridiculous.
7. It's crazy how dominant Crosby was before his concussion on New Year's Day at the 2011 Winter Classic. He played only one more game that season (2010-11), and finished with 32 goals and 34 assists in 41 games. His 0.78 goals per game and 1.61 points per game remain the highest marks of his career when playing at least 40 games.
8. Concussions limited Crosby to only 22 games the following season, but he averaged a remarkable 1.68 points per game.
9. Crosby's 1.06 points-per-game average last season was the lowest mark of his career. And yet, it may go down as his most memorable campaign, as he raised the Stanley Cup and won his first Conn Smythe Trophy.
10. He's actually trending in the wrong direction when it comes to production:
Season
GP
Points Per Game
2012-13*
36
1.56
2013-14
80
1.30
2014-15
77
1.09
2015-16
80
1.06
* Lockout-shortened season
11. More importantly, though, Crosby's been healthy. Hockey needs him on the ice as the face of the sport, not the face of concussions.
12. Crosby ranks fifth all time in points per game, and he's played in an era that can only be described as the opposite of those whose company he keeps:
Rank
Player
Points Per Game
1
Wayne Gretzky
1.921
2
Mario Lemieux
1.883
3
Mike Bossy
1.497
4
Bobby Orr
1.393
5
Crosby
1.327
13. Crosby's 1.105 points-per-game mark in the playoffs (137 points in 124 games) ranks 12th all time.
14. That two of the greatest hockey players to ever take the ice have played exclusively for Pittsburgh is insane. Hopefully Penguins supporters realize how lucky they are.
15. Think about how special Crosby is. Now, look at those points-per-game numbers above and think about how dominant Lemieux and Gretzky were.
16. Ask yourself: what hasn't Crosby won?
17. The answer: the World Cup of Hockey. And that likely changes in about eight weeks.
18. Crosby's remarkable track record is all the more jarring when it's written down:
2 Stanley Cups
1 Conn Smythe Trophy
2 Winter Olympics gold medals
1 Golden Goal (on home soil, no less)
2 Hart and Art Ross trophies
3 Ted Lindsay Awards
1 Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy
World Junior gold and silver
World Championship gold
19. One thing is for certain: Crosby will never win the Memorial Cup. What a failure.
20. Somehow, Crosby's played in only one All-Star Game, missing four due to injury. Yeah, as many as John Scott.
21. Also remarkable is how controversy-free Crosby's career has been off the ice. He's a model citizen. He lived with Mario for five years, after all.
22. Crosby's 62 regular-season points away from 1,000. That'll happen in February or March 2017. Fun!
23. Among active players, Crosby's points-per-game averages in the regular season and playoffs (1.327 and 1.105, as noted) are tops. His teammate Evgeni Malkin ranks second on both lists (1.180 and 1.040).
24. Crosby's earned slightly under $87.5 million - of course - in cash so far in his career, according to Spotrac.
25. If you're Canadian, watching this video will never, ever get old:
26. It had to be Crosby. Who else could it possibly have been?
27. Take a minute to think about the sky-high expectations placed on Crosby when he came into the league, when the Penguins were flirting with bankruptcy. It's so hard for kids to live up to the hype - because they're kids - but Crosby has delivered, and more.
28. He's won everything, his name is twice on the Stanley Cup, but this is the lasting image of his career so far, because it has to be.
The Chronicle Herald published a story about the Pittsburgh Penguins captain taking care of some unfinished business in Halifax, Nova Scotia, showing up at a fan's house to sign a jersey.
Patricia Lingley-Pottie's husband Darryl placed a plywood sign - complete with a hanging Crosby jersey - outside their home in Enfield, Nova Scotia, with a simple message: "SID PLEASE SIGN MY JERSEY."
Crosby wasn't able to get to it earlier this summer, and even though the sign was gone when he was back in the neighborhood (it stayed up for a week), he showed up at Lingley-Pottie's door weeks later, ringing the doorbell like any other Conn Smythe Trophy and Stanley Cup winner would.
"I was just shocked," Lingley-Pottie said. "I was just so full of joy.
"He remembered."
Crosby stayed at the Pottie household for 20 minutes, taking pictures and signing one for the family, as well.
Canada and the U.S. were playing in the final game of the National Junior Evaluation Camp, and the hit was a microcosm of the beating the Americans dished out on their northern neighbors.
The U.S. won 5-1.
As for McAvoy, he was at it all week. Check out this hit against Sweden:
The all-world Canadian center skated Saturday at the Dallas Stars Hockey Academy and is progressing well from a calf injury that cost him almost his entire playoffs.
"Doing well," Seguin told the Dallas Morning News' Mike Heika. "It's been a short but long summer, bit of a different summer as far as training-wise just coming off an injury, but feeling great and looking forward to the World Cup in the next month or so."
The World Cup of Hockey officially kicks off on Sept. 17 in Toronto, with training camps set to open Sept. 4 and 5. A 12-game pre-tournament exhibition schedule begins Sept. 8.
"I'm sure the World Cup's going to be pretty great," Seguin said, adding that the tournament will be all the more special because he'll be playing alongside his teammate, captain, and friend Jamie Benn in Canadian colors.
Only 24, Seguin has produced at more than a point-per-game pace over the past three seasons, evolving into one of hockey's elite players down the middle.
After Steven Stamkos opted to stay put in Tampa Bay prior to July 1, Milan Lucic became the biggest - literally and figuratively - character in the free-agent market.
The 28-year-old wound up signing a seven-year, $42-million contract with the Edmonton Oilers, and while he's expected to make an immediate impact, Lucic is now facing questions as to the kind of player he will be in the later stages of the contract and beyond.
The winger has nothing but confidence in himself to play well over the next seven years, and hopes he will continue his career even after the deal expires.
"I’m looking forward to these next seven years, and I plan on playing them out to the best of my ability and, hopefully, I can add another year or two once this contract is done," Lucic told Steve Ewen of The Province. "Hopefully things are going well and I can play as long as I want to play. There’s maybe one or two percent of guys who get to do that."
Despite his bruising style of play, Lucic has managed to compete in at least 72 games in all but one - lockout excused - of his nine NHL seasons. He was limited to 50 contests in 2009-10 with the Boston Bruins.
