The Penguins announced Sunday that Fleury will play for Canada at the 2004 World Junior Hockey Championship.
The rookie goaltender has shown enough to earn his title as The Future Of The Penguins. But by asking him to rejoin his peers for a few weeks, Pittsburgh GM Craig Patrick demonstrates a sure grip on the realities of pro hockey. NHL teams ignore those realities at their peril, as the Tampa Bay Lightning have learned.
When the Lightning drafted Vincent Lecavalier first overall in 1998, he was declared the rock upon which the franchise would be built. He jumped to the NHL immediately, playing a full season before he turned 19. He is currently in the sixth year of an NHL career that has seen at least as many downs as ups. He finally broke out for 33 goals and 78 points last season. No one on the Gulf Coast wants to see any further setbacks.
So it makes headlines when Lecavalier rides the bench, as he did for much of a recent game against Atlanta. It makes headlines when he slips into a scoring slump, as he has in December.
“It is time for Lecavalier's arrival,” wrote an irritable Gary Shelton in the St. Petersburg Times. “It is time he put the season on the end of his stick and carried it with him.”
It’s enough to make you forget that the guy is only 23 years old.
That’s what happens when you are NHL bound at the age of 18. By the time you are old enough to rent a car, people feel you’ve been around forever. Will this guy ever amount to anything, they ask themselves?
Among Vancouver fans, the Sedin twins are a regular topic of discussion. Now in their fourth season, Daniel and Henrik are largely viewed as disappointments. But they have just turned 23. Their current linemate is Jason King, a rookie who is only a year younger.
Florida’s Olli Jokinen knows what it’s like to be written off early. Drafted third overall in 1997, he was traded twice by the age of 21. Last season, he turned 24 and scored 36 goals.
This season’s list of top scorers is littered with players who did little in their early adult years. Robert Lang, Markus Naslund, Brett Hull, Daniel Alfredsson, Zigmund Palffy, Shane Doan, Todd Bertuzzi, Pavol Demitra, Bill Guerin, Milan Hejduk – many of them were 22 or 23 before they played an NHL game; some were several years older before they achieved anything in pro hockey; several were given away in trades by impatient teams.
Most of this season’s top rookies had a chance to mature before being thrown into NHL lineups. King, the leading first-year scorer, is 22. Chicago’s Brett McLean is 25. Montreal’s Michael Ryder is 23; Philadelphia’s outstanding young defenseman, Joni Pitkanen, is 20. Ottawa’s Jason Spezza doesn’t qualify as a rookie. But at the age of 20 he’s in his first full NHL season and already has 10 goals, several of them spectacular.
A few under-20s are also doing well, like Patrice Bergeron of the Bruins and Carolina’s Eric Staal. But you can bet they will have their share of scoring droughts and third-line demotions over the next few years, before finding their respective levels as pro hockey players.
Of course, someone is always pointing to Ilya Kovalchuk or Rick Nash or Dany Heatley, players who turned pro as teenagers, delivered immediately and haven’t looked back. They are the high profile exceptions to the rule.
Those pondering Fleury’s future must also consider that the maturation process takes even longer for goaltenders. Most of the good ones are not ready to carry a team until their mid-twenties. The new goaltending stars – Marty Turco, Jose Theodore and J.S. Giguere – were all between 25 and 27 when they had breakthrough seasons. Even fast learners like Roberto Luongo, Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy were 20 or 21 years old before they saw much NHL action. Fleury celebrated his 19th birthday two weeks ago.
Marc-Andre Fleury is going to see plenty of pucks and endure many a long night as the Pittsburgh Penguins build a team from scratch in the coming years. To rush him through that grinding process would be pointless. Even a short break – and the opportunity to excel in a pressure-filled international tournament – will help produce what everyone wants: a better goaltender, a man who might one day be the best goaltender in the game.
