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Where does Fleury's current run rank among performances in salary cap era?

May 22, 2018, 1:06 PM ET [131 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Vegas Golden Knights are in the middle of a historic run and so is their goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury. How great is the run by Flower? I wanted to give some context into what could end up being the best goaltending performance of the salary cap era in the playoffs.

I took the top ten goaltending performances in all situations save percentage and I also looked at the top ten goaltenders in high-danger save percentage all situations. To be eligible the goaltender’s team had to play in the Conference Finals at a minimum. Lastly, I looked at the kind of shot volume that each of the teams the goaltenders played on were giving up to understand the workload that they had to deal with. Understand that scoring chances and shot attempt volume have around a 75% correlation via the research I did in an article for Hockey Prospectus.




Without further ado here are the top ten goaltending performances in the playoffs since 2006



Right now Marc-Andre Fleury is in the lead. He still has to navigate through the Stanley Cup Final against a highly skilled Washington or Tampa Bay team, but he’s in the pole position. His 2008 performance also makes a cameo on the list. These performances are ten years apart which is amazing.

Here are the goalies that played best when the team broke down in front of them



Fleury’s athleticism is among the best of all-time at the position and when he’s on his game he is super tough to beat. He owns the top two spots on this list. He also owns three of the bottom ten spots among goaltenders who played 300 minutes in the playoffs at 67.92, 64.86, and 63.46% There are 149 goalies who meet the 300 minute minimum. Whenever I try to explain Marc-Andre Fleury’s career I liken it to the high, low, and average temperature of Death Valley. The highs are high and the lows are low. Overall the average looks fine, but the path is highly volatile. In 2018 Fleury is red hot.

So how much rubber have these goalies faced?



Outside of Arizona’s run in 2012 the Golden Knights have given up the most rubber for their goalie to deal with. This dismisses the baseless criticisms of people trying to blame the Penguins for Fleury's poor performances in the past. The Golden Knights are giving up more rubber than any other Penguins playoff team from the last decade. Pittsburgh’s Michael Therrien run Penguins also loved giving up shots. It’s worth noting how easy Chris Osgood had it. Those Red Wings teams were unreal. Fleury was the only reason Pittsburgh didn’t get swept in 2008. Therrien rode Crosby, Malkin, and Fleury to the Stanley Cup Final.

After looking at all of this information I believe Marc-Andre Fleury has a chance to have the best modern goaltending run in playoff history. He’s been that good. Outside of a meltdown I would give him the Conn Smythe Trophy whether the Golden Knights win or lose.

Thanks for reading!
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