MONTREAL — On a night the Wild wanted to belong to Marc-Andre Fleury, the future Hall of Fame goaltender was nearly upstaged by his teammates.
Nearly.
Playing in what might be his last game in his native Quebec, Fleury added another win in his quest to catch, and pass, Patrick Roy for second all-time for an NHL goaltender as Minnesota beat the Canadiens, 5-2, at Bell Centre on Tuesday.
When it was over, Fleury had made 26 saves, and when he came back to the ice as the game’s No. 1 star, he took a proper curtain call in the arena that has meant so much to him over 19 NHL seasons.
“I just wanted to take a mental picture,” he said. “Such a nice feeling. Didn’t want to stay out there too long. I don’t want to say they think it’s my last game here and I come back again next year. That’s enough attention. It’s very flattering.”
Joel Eriksson Ek scored two power-play goals, and Brandon Duhaime and Connor Dewar scored short-handed goals 26 seconds apart in the first period as the Wild rebounded from a 7-4 loss Saturday in Toronto.
Kirill Kaprizov also scored his first goal of the season to go with two assists, and Mats Zuccarello finished with three assists as Minnesota improved to 2-1-0 despite playing a skater short in the wake of injuries suffered on this trip by Matt Boldy and Alex Goligoski.
“We were fortunate with a couple of PK goals early,” head coach Dean Evason said, “but we like our 5-on-5 game early, as well. We hit a couple posts, we had a lot of good opportunities there, too, we just didn’t finish. I liked our overall game, for sure.”
Fleury, who turns 39 on Nov. 28, told reporters in training camp he had been thinking about retirement as he entered his 20th NHL season on an expiring contract he signed in July 2021.
Making his first start of the season, Fleury faced only 15 shots as the Wild built a 4-1 lead in the first two periods, but the three-time Stanley Cup winner worked hard to earn his 445th career win, which pulled him within six of Roy’s 551. That included some of his patented, acrobatic windmill and pad-stack saves.
“A few of those,” he said. “A couple smiles in the game. Good times.”
Fleury also is now 14 games from playing 1,000 for his career. Tanner Pearson scored to pull the Canadiens within 3-1, but Montreal (1-1-1) didn’t find the net again until Alex Newhook scored with 2:25 remaining.
The teams were feeling each other out early when the Wild gave Montreal the first man advantage on a Ryan Hartman tripping penalty at 11:17 of the first period. Duhaime scored on a 2 on 1 with Eriksson Ek for a 1-0 lead at 9:19, and Dewar scored in a scrum at 9:25 for a 2-0 lead.
From that point on, the Canadiens were on their heels.
“It’s a total momentum crusher for your team when you get scored on short-handed,” Dewar said.
It was the second time in as many seasons the Wild had scored short-handed goals on the same PK. Hartman and Sam Steel scored short-handed goals 20 seconds apart in a 5-3 victory over St. Louis on April 8, and in 2000, the Wild’s inaugural season, Antti Laaksonen and Wes Walz scored short-handed goals in a 4-2 victory over Vancouver.
The teams combined for 24 penalties, which made managing the lines a forward down easier for Evason and his staff.
“When certain guys were in the box, we just kind of flowed three lines,” the coach said. “The guys were very dialed in on the bench, and communication was good.”
The Wild had some scoring chances early, such as a Duhaime redirect that hit the near post, but the game really turned on the short-handed goals.
“Huge goals, obviously, at the start being down a guy,” Fleury said. “But everybody contributed. Everybody played a lot. We were consistent throughout the game. I thought we played good for 60 minutes, and it’s a big reason why we won this game.”
For Fleury, it’s another step closer to a rare milestone in a career that ultimately will put him in the Hockey Hall of Fame — and another big one at Bell Centre, where his favorite team played when he was growing up in Sorel, Quebec, an hour northeast of Montreal.
Fleury also earned his 500th career victory here in 2021 when he was with Chicago. That time, the crowd chanted his game after a 2-0 Blackhawks victory.
Wearing the remnants of a shaving cream pie, courtesy teammate Marcus Foligno, Fleury was asked if this was, indeed, his last game in Montreal.
“We’ll see. I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll see.”
