Fleury's agent laughs at suggestion that Vegas coaches helped with his game

The 2020-21 season has been a great one for Vegas Golden Knight's goaltender Marc-Andrey Fleury. After a rough 2019-20 season which involved plenty of trade rumors, he has bounced back in a big way with a 1.73 goals against average along with a .938 save percentage in 17 games.

Last month, head coach Pete DeBoer told the Review Journal that the team helped the 36-year-old netminder make adjustments to his game, which has helped turn his play around.

«It might seem subtle, but Fleury is playing deeper in the crease compared to previous years,» DeBoer said. «In that run to the Stanley Cup Final with the Knights, he was encouraged by then-goalie coach Dave Prior to be far more aggressive. It worked then. It didn't much the following two seasons.

«We spent a lot of time analyzing last year and how he got scored on and where and why. There was definitely a plan in place from our goaltending department – some ideas we thought he could incorporate to fix things. To this credit, he was all ears.»

While these comments seemed pretty harmless, they apparently didn't sit very well with outspoken player agent Alan Walsh, who happens to represent Fleury.

«It was actually Dave Prior, when Marc first came to Vegas, who worked with him on staying deeper in the crease and playing the percentages on shots,» Walsh said. «Dave's philosophy was always to force the shooter to make a perfect shot to score, and less goalie movement is better. I think Marc has always preferred challenging shooters more, and I think he adjusts his game to challenge shooters, yet at the same time perhaps stay a little deeper in his crease. But for anyone to say that after 18 years of being an elite goalie in the NHL, that somehow there are adjustments made this year that have fixed him, are laugh-out-loud ridiculous.»

While these riffs between an agent and a team aren't common, this isn't the first incident Walsh has had with the Golden Knights. During the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, when the team was choosing to play Robin Lehner instead of Fleury, Walsh caused a media circus when he tweeted a picture of Fleury with a sword going through his back, indicating the Knights were stabbing him in the back. While it remains to be seen on whether or not these comments will cause as much drama as that picture, you can bet DeBoer will be made aware of them if he hasn't already.

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