The Wild Need Marc-Andre Fleury To Have A Bounce Back Season

Hoping Fleury has a bounce back season at age 40 is ridiculous. Love the guy. He is a HOF'er but he is not the goalie he was and expected anything mor than slight decline is a recipe for disappointment.

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As evidenced by the statistics, Fleury was one of the worst-performing goaltenders in the league, and Gustavsson had a similar or even worse season in many statistics.

Much of this article is wrong. Gustavsson was the better goalie last season, and is the one the Wild should be counting on for a bounce back year. If Gus has the season he's capable of, Fleury may not tally 30 starts.

Gustavsson faced tougher competition last year and finished the season with better stats than fleury in many categories. Gus is entering his prime years while Fleury is fading. It would be nice if Fleury does better than the prior season, and that's possible with improved defensive play, but pinning hopes on goalies over 40 having bounce-back years is foolhardy at its core.

If the season goes as well as the Wild can hope, they should get over 50 starts, perhaps 60+, for Gustavsson and Wallstedt combined.

Fleury in a highly paid mentor role who is now a below average NHL goalie.

Fleury can still bounce around like a super ball, but he won't win you games.  The Wild need to manage 3-4 goals a game or at least limit penalties so goalies don't face too much grief.  

Then again, expecting players like Hartman to play disciplined is probably barking up the wrong tree.

MAF’s career reminds me of one of my favorite golfers… Both burst onto the scene at a young age, making waves with big personalities. Both rose to the very pinnacle of their respective sports winning major championships. Most of all both are extremely entertaining. Both are destined for the hall of fame, well maybe not both. It’s going to be a long shot for John Daly to get there, but you never know. 

3 hours ago, Imyourhuckleberry said:

If the season goes as well as the Wild can hope, they should get over 50 starts, perhaps 60+, for Gustavsson and Wallstedt combined.

Fleury in a highly paid mentor role who is now a below average NHL goalie.

Guerin said he's looking for 40-50 starts for MAF. (Shrug)

They need to let Wally get the majority of the starts in IA.. He needs to play...

27 minutes ago, Burnt Toast said:

MAF’s career reminds me of one of my favorite golfers… Both burst onto the scene at a young age, making waves with big personalities. Both rose to the very pinnacle of their respective sports winning major championships. Most of all both are extremely entertaining. Both are destined for the hall of fame, well maybe not both. It’s going to be a long shot for John Daly to get there, but you never know. 

30 minutes ago, Willy the poor boy said:

They need to let Wally get the majority of the starts in IA.. He needs to play...

Completely agree. I think he'll likely get fewer than 20 starts at the NHL level this season, but I think Gustavsson should get more than 40 himself. If Fleury plays more than half of the games, it would be quite surprising to me. He played 40 last year, but after putting together a strong series of games periodically, he would then get beaten much more consistently.  He had an .878 save percentage in his final 10 games when they had him facing equally difficult matchups to Gus.

Fleury built up his better stats earlier in the year because Gus was facing the difficult teams while Fleury wasn't getting as many. When they tried using Fleury as the 1A, he held up for a few games before getting beaten regularly.

I'm dreaming of the day our GM will know when it's the right time to let a player go.  He should watch what they do in Vegas.  Everyone loves MAF, that's not the issue.  The issue is we're trying to win, not have the best locker room.  

4 hours ago, Willy the poor boy said:

Guerin said he's looking for 40-50 starts for MAF. (Shrug)

If this is what Guerin said you can probably bank on it happening. Fluery is the captain of team Billy's Boy's and a throw back to Billy's glory days. He will be given every opportunity to go out on a high note. So I guess coach Hynes has his marching orders on how many games Fluery needs to be in the crease. 

1 hour ago, Outskated said:

I'm dreaming of the day our GM will know when it's the right time to let a player go.

Who has he let walk? There are more than a few as i think about it: parise, suter, koivu, stall, T-bot, fiala....and a bunch of bottom 6 and 3rd pair players.

So what is the long term plan?  Is it about getting out the old stale veteran personalities and replacing them with salt-of-the-earth happy to be here types.   Ok, I can follow that then what's the second act?  Filling the top 6 with killers I hope (and I'm guessing Guerin would agree) so Ogzy and Hooz Nut are the first wave.  Let's go bro's!!  

3 minutes ago, MacGyver said:

He will be given every opportunity to go out on a high note.

He'll have at least 31 games with one in each arena on his farewell tour.

2 hours ago, Outskated said:

I'm dreaming of the day our GM will know when it's the right time to let a player go.

Shooter is on record saying he doesn't really know much about goaltenders and goaltending. I assume that this meant he thinks they're weird. So, he thinks Fleury can do it.

I disagree with that. I'm seeing a goalie who is small, still flexible but losing reflexes and having to guess more and more. That is not a recipe for a successful goalie this year, and it is definitely not a recipe for consistency. Good defense or not, it looks like he is on the downward slide which tends to get steeper once it's there. 

15 hours ago, Pewterschmidt said:

15 hours ago, MacGyver said:

He will be given every opportunity to go out on a high note.

He'll have at least 31 games with one in each arena on his farewell tour.

I don't see that happening. If you value his send off more than winning, you lose the whole team and that's the type of thing that would have Kaprizov looking to sign elsewhere.

Kaprizov might even like Fleury, but it's a results league, so Fleury would need to be clearly outplaying the other goalie options and I don't see that as highly likely given the way things have been trending the last 3 seasons where Fleury has been the best Wild goalie in exactly zero seasons.

Certainly is possible.  Add a little bulk to the team, some luck with solid, consistent defense, win a few more faceoffs, and play a more disciplined less penalty game.  If those elements are part of the Wild this season, even in his final year and tapering performance, 24-25 should be a better season. 

I believe Fleury will have a bounce back year of a sort.  He is obviously aging and his timing and quickness just isn't what it used to be.  He's a player who has had a HOF career with athletic, improbable saves and the ability that has carried him is fading a bit, but I think last year wasn't a clear indicator of how far he really has dropped off.

The main caveat to Fleury bouncing back at all this season is having a mostly healthy team in front of him.  I know every team has injuries, but the players who did get injured often were expected to play key roles for the team.  The article mentions Spurgeon and Brodie because those are names people immediately attribute to defense.

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The Wild suffered several injuries last year, mainly to key defenders Jonas Brodin and Jared Spurgeon. It isn’t difficult to imagine a scenario where Minnesota’s penalty kill improves this year with a more stable environment. The Wild penalty kill ranked third last in the NHL last year, killing just 74.5% of their short-handed predicaments.

Having both out for significant portions of the season definitely didn't make us a better defensive team despite Faber's attempt at holding the fort together by playing half the game. The opposing team was able to break down our defense too often for high danger chances.  We couldn't force them into more difficult shots as often.  We weren't able to cover passing lanes as well.  Our team defense was porous and dysfunctional at best.

There is more to it than just the defense though.  The forwards also contribute to defense. 

Say what you want about Foligno, but having him out of the roster most of the season did not help our team defense or the PK.  Even when he did play, he did not seem like he was healthy.  A healthy Foligno doesn't just have the other team looking over their shoulder, it gives us a pretty good, disruptive defensive presence on the ice that no one else on the roster was able to match.  The closest comparable is Eriksson Ek's defense, but he's a little bit of a different style defender.

Gaudreau being hobbled also hurt the team.  Gaudreau isn't much better than a 4th line option, but defensively he can contribute a bit.  A healthy Gaudreau is better than a Lettieri or a Luchini.  I'd also say he's probably better than Khusnutdinov, but I'm hoping to see more from Khusnutdinov this season where he really challenges and overtakes Gaudreau.  Defensively they both seem to be about equivalent, though I think Khusnutdinov's quickness will give him an edge once he becomes more acclimated to the NHL.  I'd also like to see him be used in PK situations more.  Point is, a challenge by Khusnutdinov should motivate Gaudreau to be a bit more aggressive, both of which helps us overall.

Boldy was also hurt for a number of games.  I know top 6 offensive players tend not be thought of so much when it comes to defense, but Boldy has such good hand-eye coordination that he stops a fair amount of breakout passes with his stick.

Why are I bringing all this up?  Because the Wild are heavily reliant on team defense, and as the pieces start to be missing and others are shuffled in, team defense suffered a lot last year - none of that helping Fleury or our PK.  Save percentage as whole in the NHL was lower last year and shooting percentages were up too.  That also didn't help.

What I think will help is having people healthy more.  I think Trenin will help gives a bit of flexibility while being a bit more balance so there is less of a drop-off if a few players do get hurt for short intervals.  I also think Hynes will change up the system to something that will give the goaltenders a better chance to stop more picks.

So yes, I do think Fleury will have a bit of a bounce back year, but I think it will be less of Fleury himself bouncing back and more the team helping him (and Gustavsson) be more successful by making the other team work harder for their shots than they had to do last year given that we could only put a shell of the team of the ice from the year prior.