Matt Blewett-USA TODAY Sports
A certain NHL goaltender known as ‘Flower’ has been blooming for parts of three decades, thriving as the world – and his league – have undergone countless changes.
Last season, Marc-Andre Fleury, the Minnesota Wild’s ageless wonder, climbed past his boyhood idol, Patrick Roy, for second on the all-time list of games played by an NHL goalie. In addition, he recently became the only goaltender besides Martin Brodeur to win a game as a teenager and as a 40-year-old.
Not to say that Fleury, who turned 40 last week, has been around for a while. But when the Quebec native won his first game as a rookie with the Pittsburgh Penguins on Oct. 18, 2003, at just 18 years old:
. Current rookie of the year candidates Matvei Michkov (Flyers), Macklin Celebrini (Sharks), Will Smith (Sharks) and Cutter Gauthier (Ducks) weren’t even born.
. Alex Ovechkin had yet to score his first NHL goal. Ovechkin now has (gulp) 868, including 27 against Fleury – the most he has scored against any goaltender.
. Gas cost $1.56 a gallon.
. Tampa Bay’s John Tortorella and Carolina’s Peter Laviolette were relatively unknown head coaches who had yet to lead their teams to Stanley Cups. Laviolette is now seventh on the NHL’s all-time win list, while Tortorella is ninth. They have combined to coach for 10 teams since Fleury broke into the NHL.
· Brett Hull, Ron Francis, Chris Chelios, Adam Oates, Mario Lemieux, James Patrick, Dave Andreychuk, Mark Messier and Steve Thomas were among the players still active. So were Alexander Mogilny, Al MacInnis, Scott Stevens, Eric Desjardins, Kevin Miller, Joe Sakic, Brendan Shanahan, Brian Leetch, Sergei Fedorov and Rob Blake.
· Dominik Hasek, Ed Belfour, Sean Burke, Garth Snow, Curtis Joseph, Ron Tugnutt and Roman Cechmanek were among the goalies still playing. And Ilya Bryzgalov had played one NHL game and had yet to tell the world he wanted to be a cosmonaut.
· The average price of a U.S. house was $246,300, per Yahoo Finance. It’s now $417,630.
· Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin had not yet reached the NHL. Crosby was playing in the QMJHL and Malkin was playing in Russia.
· Breaking Bad was not a part of TV lore. The show, which many critics call the best TV series of the 21st century had yet to debut.
· Video streaming services like Netflix and YouTube were not a part of our vocabulary. And neither were Ditto, Waze, Venmo, Siri, Impossible Burger and many other creations.
· Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews were both six years old.
Related: 10 Memorable Moments From Marc-Andre Fleury’s Remarkable NHL Career
· The goalie trapezoid was not part of the NHL’s rulebook. Neither were shootouts. Shootouts? They were for Westerns, not hockey games.
· Donald Trump had not yet become a TV mainstay on The Apprentice, let alone become president.
· Apple smartphones, electric cars, cryptocurrencies, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X) and Artificial Intelligence were far from reality.
· Anaheim, Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, Carolina, Washington, St. Louis, Vegas and Florida had not yet won Stanley Cups. Heck, Vegas was 14 years away from even joining the NHL.
· Jaromir Jagr had only played on two NHL teams. He ended up playing on nine.
· Fleury had a $727,000 cap hit as a rookie. He has since earned nearly $93 million, according to PuckPedia.
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