Sports Publications

The ultimate game face? It belongs to Fleury

Sporting News, The, May 24, 1999 by Larry Wigge

His father is 5-8 and his mother is 5-0, so Theo Fleury never had any delusions of being 6-2, 220 pounds. But that never stops him from trash-talking and trashing players 9 or 10 inches taller and 30 or 40 pounds heavier.

When the Avalanche gambled that they could sign Fleury, the feisty 5-6, 180-pound free-agent-to-be, they wanted him for his breakaway speed and his ability to agitate the biggest of foes. But more than anything, they wanted him for the game face he brings to the playoffs.

Fleury scored 10 goals and had 15 assists in 15 games after the Avalanche acquired him from the Flames in late February for third-line winger Rene Corbet and defensemen Wade Belak and Robyn Regehr. But that was just a primer for Colorado's Pierre Lacroix and all general managers who feel they have a chance to win the Stanley Cup.

"When you get into the playoffs, you want players you can go to war with," Lacroix says. "Theo has been the ultimate warrior his entire career, taking on the biggest and baddest players without hesitation to win a game."

That's why Lacroix wanted Claude Lemieux before the Avalanche won their first Cup in 1996-and that's why he doesn't look at acquiring a dynamo like Fleury as a gamble. Forget the ill-fated Blues trade for free-agent-to-be Wayne Gretzky in February 1997, when they traded multiple players and draft choices to the Kings and then lost Gretzky and all they had invested in him when he subsequently signed with the Rangers.

"The longer I'm here," says Fleury, sporting 14 stitches in his face, "the more I like it."

The ultimate game face. That's what Lacroix likes to have on his side.

"I've got six stitches under my right eye, three across the bridge of my nose and five more over my right eye," Fleury says with a toothless grin. "It's a face only my mother and teammates could love, eh?

"I've always had a big chip on my shoulder, which has driven me to prove to everybody that size isn't the most important thing. Hey, what you see is what you get."

And what the Avalanche get is one of the most fearless leaders in the game, a scorer and a winner of a Stanley Cup with Calgary in 1989.

"Tell Pierre he doesn't have to worry about me," Fleury says. "After not getting past the first round in 10 years, I can get used to playing second fiddle to stars like Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic, Patrick Roy, Sandis Ozolinsh and Claude Lemieux."

Counting stitches for Fleury and most hockey players is like a badge of courage. They are almost disappointed if they are cut and don't have stitches to show for it.

"It's almost like a baseball player who refuses to dust himself off after being thrown at," Fleury says, "but more colorful."

This code of a warrior is hard for anyone other than a hockey player to understand.

"My dad used to play senior hockey, and he would come home all cut up," Fleury says. "It's battle scars, that's all. People stare at me all the time when I look like this. They're fascinated by it. They always ask me how it happened.

"I tell them: I'm a hockey player. We all look like this at playoff time."

A Denver dentist, looking for a little publicity, no doubt, bought an ad in the Rocky Mountain News in which he offered free dental implants to replace Fleury's three lost teeth in exchange for a Stanley Cup.

Says Fleury, "Tell him I'll see what I can do about the Cup, but I like the toothless look. It makes me look like a hockey player."