Wild G Fleury calls his Game 2 performance 'embarrassing'
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Veteran goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury sounded off on his performance as the Minnesota Wild suffered a 7-3 loss to the Dallas Stars in Game 2 of their best-of-seven series Wednesday.
Fleury allowed all seven goals on 31 shots as the Stars tied the first-round series at 1-1.
"Oh man, embarrassing on my part giving up seven goals like that in the playoffs," Fleury said post-game, per NHL.com. "You know, I want to come in and give a chance to my team to stay in the game and win, and that's not what I did. I gave up too many goals.
"I think we had to open up to try to come back in the game and we gave up more chances, but bottom line, I didn't make any good key saves in the game."
The Wild fell behind 4-1 in the second period before closing within one goal, but two goals in less than a minute for the Stars largely closed the door on any comeback hopes entering the final frame.
Fleury started Game 2 just two days after Filip Gustavsson led the Wild to a victory in Game 1, making 51 saves in his team's double-overtime win.
Wild head coach Dean Evason defended his plan to continue to rotate the goalies, stating Fleury was not the reason for the loss.
"It's what we do, right? We've done it all year," Evason said. "The game, nothing was on 'Flower' tonight. It was all on us."
Gustavsson had a 22-9-7 record in the regular season with a .931 save percentage and a 2.10 goals-against average. Fleury was 24-16-4 with a .908 save percentage and a 2.85 GAA.
"I don't know how to answer that because both goalies have earned obviously to be in the net," Evason said when asked if Gustavsson could have done anything more to earn the Game 2 start. "We made the decision to go with Flower. They had a short-handed breakaway and [three] power-play goals. What would you like Flower to do, right? He made some incredible saves for us.
"We just spoke of all the odd-man rushes that we gave up. Another one was a breakaway. Another one was a power play. That's what, five? We gave them their opportunities. They took them, too. They played really well, but we didn't do the right things in front of our goaltender tonight."
The series will now shift to Minnesota, where Gustavsson is expected to start Game 3 on Friday as the Wild remain on their goaltender rotation. Game 4 is scheduled for Sunday.