Fleury's save already legendary

As no Stanley Cup playoff goaltender does, really, until he makes the impossible save.

A stop wasn't likely when the shooter was Detroit Red Wings' Nicklas Lidstrom, who was not 60 feet out as suggested by the NHL's official play-by-play report, but one-quarter of that.

Not with one second and fractions on the clock and the targeted side of the Pittsburgh Penguins net vacant.

But Fleury dug his left skate into his crease and threw himself horizontally, almost violently across the ice, where Lidstrom's shot perished in his thickly padded chest.

It was the stop that saved the Stanley Cup for the Penguins, and Fleury will relive it in his dreams as often as Lidstrom will see it in his nightmares.

"I knew there wasn't much time left," the goalie said Friday post-game of the longest second of his life. "I just decided to get my body out there and it hit me in the ribs."

The champagne hadn't even been popped when the debate had begun: Which Game 7 save was bigger -- Fleury's on Lidstrom, or the astonishing pad stop made by Tampa Bay's Nikolai Khabibulin on Calgary's Jordan Leopold in 2004, the Flames then trying in vain for the equalizer in the final moments of that championship series?

Both proved paradise for the goalies and poison for the shooters.

The NHL had played 1,230 regular-season games and 86 playoff matches this season, plus 59 minutes and 59 seconds of one more, to reach this climax:

Lidstrom, the Red Wings' brilliant 17-year captain, a four-time Stanley Cup winner with No. 5 perhaps destined should he send it into overtime, vs. Fleury, the Penguins' never-won-the-big-one goaltender, three games beaten -- once badly -- on Joe Louis Arena ice this series.

In the aftermath of defeat, Lidstrom would remember the season's final shot-save-rebound-save in the most curious way: "Just that the puck kind of scored."

But how sweet that Fleury, the 24-year-old native of Sorel-Tracy, Que., more than kind of stopped it. He will parade in Pittsburgh today with the Stanley Cup, and soon will have his name tapped into the game's ultimate prize.

The sound of trophy engraver Louise St. Jacques' hammer and letter-punch will be quieter than the clank of the crossbar that nearly deafened Fleury 2:10 before his brilliant save on Lidstrom.

Detroit's Niklas Kronwall had wired a shot off the bar, the puck caroming away harmlessly, and from the overhead camera Fleury soon was seen patting the pipe in gratitude.

Had Kronwall's shot been an inch lower or had Lidstrom buried his, and had the Red Wings prevailed in overtime, the Penguins' second Cup defeat to Detroit in as many seasons would have stuck to Fleury like game-worn long johns.

But this result?

"It's a dream," he said, "since you're a little boy."

In goal, the seven-game final had focused on Detroit's Chris Osgood, the 36-year-old three-time champion who statistically outperformed Fleury in the post-season.

Osgood's playoffs show a .926 save percentage and 2.01 goals-against average. Of the eight goalies who played at least 10 post-season games, Fleury's .908 ranked him seventh, his 2.61 average placing him only sixth.

Various pre-playoff critiques of Fleury were hardly flattering. The Hockey News rated him 27th on its list of the NHL's Top 30 goalies. (Osgood didn't even make the list, flunked for his tepid .887 regular-season save percentage.)

In building its "perfect goalie," the magazine had Fleury as its runner-up for desired flexibility while ignoring him in a dozen other categories.

At least Fleury was graded No. 11 (Osgood was a lowly 44th) on Goalies' World magazine's season-ending Top 60 list, hailed for his seven stolen wins ---- a victory when a netminder's club is outshot by 10 or more.

Fleury lost the first two to Detroit in the final, then won the next two in Pittsburgh. But in Game 5 at Detroit, the Red Wings ran him out of the rink, chasing him to the bench after 36 minutes with five goals on 21 shots.

He rallied in Game 6, making 27 saves in Pittsburgh's 2-1 home-ice win. Then came Game 7, and Fleury's effort that was one dramatic save better than Osgood's.

With one second and fractions left in a spellbinding contest, a fitting exclamation mark in this series, it was square in Fleury's sternum that Lidstrom drilled the season's final shot.

With this puck to the chest, a goalie showed the Penguins his heart. And if that shot, in time, defines his career, then what better place for him to have been struck?

-- Canwest News Service

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 15, 2009 C5