The Las Vegas Golden Knights have lost their starting netminder.
According to a report from Las Vegas Golden Knights beat reporter Jesse Granger of The Athletic, the Golden Knights have lost beloved veteran goaltender Marc Andre Fleury to injury. It is unclear at this time how Fleury was injured but the Golden Knights have revealed that this is a lower body injury and additionally they have listed Fleury as day to day as per Granger. Head coach Gerard Gallant has confirmed this information so there's no doubt about it's voracity.
As a result of the injury to Fleury the Golden Knights have been forced to scramble and they will be calling up goaltender Max Lagace to replace Fleury in the line up. Lagace has been playing for the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League but had been previously called up just a week ago when there was some expectation that Fleury's wife could give birth at any moment. Lagace has only appeared in one game for the Golden Knights this season and he did not fare particularly well, recording a 4/02 goals against average as well as a .871 save percentage.
Those are some ugly numbers and it seems more than fair to suggest that it will be backup goaltender Malcolm Subban who will shoulder the majority of the work load while Fluery is out nursing his injury. Subban has also looked shaky at times duringh his 12 appearances in the 2018 - 2019 National Hockey League regular season. Over that stretch of games he has recorded a 3.13 goals against average and a .902 save percentage, not exactly superstar level numbers.
There are two silver linings here for the Golden Knights however, so this is not all bad news. The first and most obvious is that if Fleury is indeed on the sidelines with an injury that likely greatly increases the likelihood of him being available when his wife does finally give birth to their new baby. Hockey is important of course but I have no doubt that Fleury would love to be there for the birth of his child.
The other is that Subban will likely now get to perform in a stretch of games in which teams will be very much playing playoff style hockey. It's a great opportunity for the notoriously streaky goalie to build up his confidence.