Flower Blossoming
By Bob Grove

Hockey fans in Pittsburgh have become accustomed to the instant success story.

There was Pierre Larouche, who led all National Hockey League rookies with 68 points in 1974-75, helping drive the Penguins to within one victory of the Stanley Cup semifinals. Mario Lemieux? In 1984-85 it was first shift, first shot, first goal, Calder Trophy.

Jaromir Jagr won two Cups in his first two NHL seasons in 1991 and 1992, the second of which may not have happened without him. Sidney Crosby last season became the youngest player ever to score 100 points. And just last month, Evgeni Malkin became the first player in modern NHL history to score goals in his first six games while Jordan Staal became the youngest player in NHL history both to score on a penalty shot and to score two short-handed goals in one game.

The Penguins have been around for 39 years, but they've been blessed with more than their share of young talents whose assimilation into the world's best hockey league could be measured in days, not years. For most teams, draft success stories unfold along a timeline much more like the one Marc-Andre Fleury has traveled.

Sure, an 18-year-old Fleury stood on his head in his NHL debut, stopping 46 shots and a penalty shot in a 3-0 home loss to Los Angeles back in October 2003. But over the rest of that season and each of the next two, Fleury produced bursts of brilliance spelled by periods of growing pains.

He won just four of 20 decisions with Pittsburgh as a rookie during a season in which he suffered a dramatic loss with Team Canada in the World Junior Championships and a disappointing early exit from the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League playoffs with Cape Breton. The following season, Fleury played with the AHL's Baby Penguins during the NHL lockout and lost the two playoff games he started.

Last season he lost more than twice as many games as he won with the Penguins, often struggling in critical situations. He surrendered bunches of early goals, allowed too many goals in the failing minutes of regulation and in overtime and was plagued by some bad habits: allowing big rebounds, dropping to the ice too early and too often and mishandling the puck.

We can't forget that his first three professional seasons were played under the shadow of his bonus-laden contract, which contributed to his constant shuffling to the AHL. Nor can we forget that he was playing behind one of the NHL's worst teams. But otherwise he was going through the typical learning process for a goaltender-adjusting to the speed and rhythm of the NHL game, the travel demands, the pressures.

Still, when the current season approached there were more than a few fans openly wondering whether the No. 1 choice in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft was ever going to begin playing like the franchise goaltender everyone believed he was just a few years ago. They weren't exactly quieted when Fleury got off to a slow start in training camp.

But Fleury shut out the Flyers on opening night and hasn't looked back since. Fleury has found the consistency he lacked in previous seasons while starting the vast majority of games. He's making the outstanding saves and the routine ones as well. There's more economy of motion in his play and a new-found ability to make the big save at the right time.

Through the first quarter of the season, the Penguins had made the second-largest defensive improvement in the NHL. There's plenty of credit to go around for that, but if the Penguins are going to turn their good start into a playoff appearance, it will be in large part because Fleury has shot up the list of the NHL's best goaltenders-not instantly but at his own, more typical, pace.

PSR Senior Writer Bob Grove is the regular host of the Penguins Radio Network and has covered the team since 1981.