Has Marc-Andre Fleury become overrated in recent years?

[the valiant effort]

Fleury has a Vezina?!

EDIT: ah, right. A “Vezina”

 

[kerrabria]

Doesn’t sound as good when he was probably closer to borderline top 10 for the first half of the decade.

Yea, he’s a good goalie, but IMO you’re more so talking about Brodeur, Luongo and Roy, who were consistently and undoubtedly top 10 goalies for a LONG TIME. What Fleury did is rare, but he still lags behind those guys when it comes to longevity IMO.

Nobody says Fleury is on Brodeur and Roy's tier.
People say Fleury is on Luongo's tier because those two have similar resumes.

And you're underselling Fleury's legacy. His prime lasted 14 years (2007-21). Those years overlapped with the primes of Brodeur, Lundqvist, Rinne, Price, Quick, Luongo, and Bobrovsky among others who had shorter (but still phenomenol) peaks.

Being a Top 5-10 goaltender during that stretch is more impressive than being a Top 5 goaltender now. An underdiscussed reason for the increase in scoring is how much worse the current generation of goaltenders are compared to the 2010s.

 

[Nucks2001]

Nobody says Fleury is on Brodeur and Roy's tier.
People say Fleury is on Luongo's tier because those two have similar resumes.

And you're underselling Fleury's legacy. His prime lasted 14 years (2007-21). Those years overlapped with the primes of Brodeur, Lundqvist, Rinne, Price, Quick, Luongo, and Bobrovsky among others who had shorter (but still phenomenol) peaks.

Being a Top 5-10 goaltender during that stretch is more impressive than being a Top 5 goaltender now. An underdiscussed reason for the increase in scoring is how much worse the current generation of goaltenders are compared to the 2010s.

To be fair, Luongo has a career .919 SV% (over 1000gp), which is just crazy to think about.
Faced way more shots than Fleury could dream of, and practically fought for every win and shutout on some god awful, unimaginable Panthers Teams.

The early Canucks teams were not much better either, he was easily their most valuable player. Luongo only had a brief period (‘09-13), where he legitimately had a good team in front of him and as much as people want to trash on Luongo’s chokes during those years, his numbers are lightyears better than Fleury’s (10-14) and he has a Gold medal to boot for in that same time period (he ACTUALLY contributed to that 2010 medal).

I mean I don't get how you can put Fleury next to Luongo when it's seen as general conseus by most people that Luongo was a top 5 goalie from 2004-2011. Fleury never had that sort of a stretch and Luongo matches him in longevitiy. Stanley Cups for Fleury sure, but let's not underrate Luongo now.

 

[Channelcat]

In all years

 

[CokenoPepsi]

And those are designed to get attention by any means necessary, the easiest way to do that is outrage clicks.

Do you really think those guys believe everything they say and write?

Oh no of course not, but just the fact that it is a discussion at all...

 

[The Expert]

Darcy Kuemper says hi. Maybe Adin Hill too.

For someone to be overrated they need to be rated highly by a lot of people.

 

[SomeDude]

Oh no of course not, but just the fact that it is a discussion at all...

Pittsburgh media are saying Bryan Rust should be on USA for the Olympics. It's dumb stuff to try to get attention, it's not real life. Nobody actually thinks that Fleury is a Rushmore goalie.

 

[Offtheboard412]

Only people who overrate Fleury are the casual yinzer fans who don't really follow hockey that closely. I used to have to listen to my old boss vehemently argue that we should have kept Fleury and traded Malkin lol.

 

[Voight]

Fleury has a Vezina?!

EDIT: ah, right. A “Vezina”

Pretty telling that the year he won, Vasi was voted 1st AST

To be fair, Luongo has a career .919 SV% (over 1000gp), which is just crazy to think about.
Faced way more shots than Fleury could dream of, and practically fought for every win and shutout on some god awful, unimaginable Panthers Teams.

The early Canucks teams were not much better either, he was easily their most valuable player. Luongo only had a brief period (‘09-13), where he legitimately had a good team in front of him and as much as people want to trash on Luongo’s chokes during those years, his numbers are lightyears better than Fleury’s (10-14) and he has a Gold medal to boot for in that same time period (he ACTUALLY contributed to that 2010 medal).

I mean I don't get how you can put Fleury next to Luongo when it's seen as general conseus by most people that Luongo was a top 5 goalie from 2004-2011. Fleury never had that sort of a stretch and Luongo matches him in longevitiy. Stanley Cups for Fleury sure, but let's not underrate Luongo now.

If Lu played on the Penguins, he'd have cups too.

 

[57special]

MAF has been low key vg for MN this year. I do find it tiresome to have him constantly lauded for his accomplishments by the local press, when that was for things he did for other teams, and a long time ago. IDGAF that he is a future HOF'er for his play with PIT and VGK. He has been a decent(not great) backup for MN, mostly.

 

[blundluntman]

I like Fleury but if Cujo isn't in the HoF, Fleury should have no chance of getting in.

 

[ColbyChaos]

I know. I'm going to get a lot of flack for this. I think he's a very good goalie and his longevity speaks for itself, but I don't think he was the best-of-the-best for his generation. Hot take: I don't think Marc-Andre Fleury was ever consistently a top 5 goalie in the NHL. I still think being top 10 over stretches is impressive, but I don't understand how some people can justify putting him over Lundqvist or Price. Still a HHOF and a good goalie.

2005-2010
I'd comfortably put these goalies over him:
Brodeur
Luongo
Kiprusoff
Lundqvist
Nabokov
Thomas
Miller

2010-2015:
Statistically, Fleury's worst 5-year stretch. Lost his starting job a couple times and was often dubbed as a "choker" in the playoffs:
Lundqvist
Price
Quick
Rinne
Rask
Luongo
*I think you could argue Crawford here too

2015-2020
Vasilevsiky
Price
Bobrovsky
Rask
Bishop
Rinne
Lundqvist
(More of a case for Fleury here, but still not very convincing).

I know he won the Vezina in 2021, but would you actually consider him to be a top 5 tendy in 2021? Over Vasi, Helle, Saros, Shersterkin and others?? No doubt a great season by him, but I felt like he was given the Vezina as a gift.

You can easily argue and be right saying Crawford.

Fleury only has career wins over him and that’s because he hopped from Pit to Vegas to Minnesota while never being stuck trying to carry a bad team ever in his career. Head to head he was never better.

Also not to mention that fleury sucked in the playoffs and cost his team if anything with his one good season with the pens being in 08. 09 they won in spite of him, 10-12 he sucked ass cheeks, 13 he got replaced by Vokoun who is actually a great goalie but he didn’t stack a bunch of wins on Nashville so people forgot about him, 14 he sucked, 16-17 he got replaced, 18 is a decent year but that golden knights team was able to win with their 5th string goalie in net, 20-22 he was replaced and was made a backup. Now he was made the backup to Gustavsson but not fair to hold it against him since he has a built in excuse of being old anyway.

Dude was made the backup goalie

 

[ColbyChaos]

Fleury had some low lows and some high highs. He’s like a gunslinging QB in the NFL. When you rely on your talent and athleticism over mechanics, it’s going to lead to some highlight reel saves and some blunders.

It also didn’t help that he played behind Dan Bylsma’s “system” - if you can call it that, for quite awhile including all of the playoff blowups that gave him his negative reputation. A lot of people do not want to admit it but goalies and their stats are greatly at the mercy of the team around them. It’s no surprise he won his Vezina after he went elsewhere.

I don’t know how he could be overrated when it seems like half the people, at least on here, think he was terrible.

Regardless of how people rate him, he’s been one of the most entertaining goalies of his generation and possibly the last of his kind now that goalies have angles and mechanics drilled into their DNA and don’t just go out there and try to keep the puck out of the net anyway possible which seems to have been MAF’s plan all along.

You act like Vokoun was never acquired and that he didn’t outplay Fleury while the big bad Dan Bylsma was still there lmao

 

[Tryblot]

Fleury has always been extremely overrated. One of the most overrated players of this last generation.

 

[ColbyChaos]

Saying MAF is "overrated" at any stage of his career when he has more wins than Lundqvist, Belfour and Roy feels like an exercise reaching for all kinds of haunted compulsion.

Appreciate your caveat as a Flyers fan.

Casual detected

 

[ColbyChaos]

Wasn't all him. Their depth between 2011-2015 or so wasn't great. 2012 is the only year he really blew it for them. When everyone suddenly started making bad trades with them, their fortunes turned.

Their depth those years was better than the depth they had in 09 FOH lmao

 

[bambamcam4ever]

Penguins management underrating Fleury caused them nearly a decade of goaltending issues.

What decade was that? The only mistake they made was trusting Tristan Jarry.

Their depth those years was better than the depth they had in 09 FOH lmao

Yeah they had the best team in the league for a few years and were let down by Fleury and Bylsma