During the first intermission of tonight’s Penguins-Flyers game on NBCSN, Mike Milbury and Bob McKenzie discussed the big news out of Pittsburgh this week: GM Jim Rutherford giving Marc-Andre Fleury a vote of confidence as the Pens’ goalie moving forward, and confirmation he would try to sign the pending UFA.
“As long as I’m GM here, he’s my goalie,” Rutherford told ESPN.com earlier this week. “My plan is to re-sign him when the time is right. When that is, I don’t know, if it’s during the year or after the year, but I do want to re-sign him.
“I believe in him.”
Fleury, who turns 30 in November, is in the last of a seven-year, $35 million deal that carries a $5M average annual cap hit. Part of Rutherford’s desire to keep Fleury could be the relatively weak UFA goalie class projected for this summer; it’s currently headed by Antti Niemi, Viktor Fasth, Jhonas Enroth, Josh Harding, Karri Ramo, Jonas Gustavsson and Michal Neuvirth, and there are no guarantees all of them even get to market.