Marc-André Fleury perhaps embodies the image of the gentleman, he was capable of getting angry, words of Michel Therrien.
The Quebec goalkeeper hated losing. And the walls of the defunct Mellon Arena have paid the price more than once.
“Once in the old Mellon Arena, I took him out of his net,” Therrien told Thursday on the show JiC. He goes into the room and sticks his stick into the wall. Pierre Gervais of the Penguins comes to tell me: “Hey, there’s a big hole in the wall, Marc-André has garroked his stick.” I went to him: “Flower, you can’t do that, it’s the guys’ room.” He said to me: ‘Yeah, Mike, you’re right, it won’t happen again…’
Fake. The incident happened again.
“A month and a half later, Fleury is still hanging his stick like an arrow, a big hole in the wall,” continued Therrien, who finds it very funny today. I take out the yellow pages and tell him: ‘You have 48 hours to find someone who will come and repair the room.'”
The damn yellow pads
Furthermore, Therrien, who nicknamed Fleury “Gumby” at the start of his career because of his extraordinary flexibility, confided that he hated the yellow leg warmers that the Sorelois loved in Pittsburgh.
An ophthalmologist wrote to the Penguins at the time to explain that the yellow pads made it easier for opposing shooters to spot openings in Fleury’s net.
But Fleury held on to his yellow leggings. Therrien used stratagems.
“I tell the equipment guy, ‘Order a set of yellow pads and a blocker and put that on white.’ […] Afterwards, I asked the guys: “There, you’re not trying to score, you’re shooting at Marc-André to make him feel big.”
See Therrien’s full speech paying tribute to his former goalkeeper in the video above.
