Cam Talbot named NHL’s First Star of the Week

Well, this is convenient. The week after the Minnesota Wild traded for legendary netminder Marc-Andre Fleury from the Chicago Blackhawks, the other half of their tandem is named the First Star of the Week.

Announced by the NHL on Monday, Cam Talbot has earned the title for earning three wins, holding a 1.33 goals against average and a .959 save percentage.

And those three wins came against some stiff competition as well. Most recently, he kept Minnesota in the game against the Colorado Avalanche enough for them to post an incredible comeback win in overtime on Sunday. The other two wins came against the Vancouver Canucks and the Vegas Golden Knights, and he managed to post a shutout against the latter.

If this is a true sign-off before Fleury takes the starting position in a more permanent role, then it is one hell of a way to do so. Fleury wasn’t going to play the day he was traded, he wasn’t going to play Thursday — the day the team allowed him to go back to Chicago and pack some things — and he wasn’t going to play the day after he made his debut. It all just fell into Talbot’s lap and he has played really damn well.

Going forward it will be interesting to see what happens, but at least we can have confidence in the two-headed monster of a tandem.