Anyone wondering how the more senior Penguins find it in them to compete against a lifelong friend in Marc-Andre Fleury ... uh, shouldn't.
To say they're all competitive would qualify as a catastrophic understatement, and that means all of them: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and, of course, Flower himself.
Way back when the latter was drafted, almost exactly 20 years ago, I was assigned by the Post-Gazette to travel all the way up to his home in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, a good bit north of Montreal, and part of my front-page report described a scene I'll never forget in watching both Flower and his younger sister Marylene engaged in a rabid soccer shootout in the Fleurys' backyard. (And let the record further show that she came with an even more pronounced bite, as the parents both agreed.)
Knowing, too, that Flower's never really changed, even at age 38, I couldn't help but smile up in the PPG Paints Arena press box on this Thursday night when it was Letang who beat Flower for the icebreaking goal in the Penguins' 4-1 win over the Wild ... and he did so in a way that undoubtedly had the man seething under that mask.
Take a look in live motion first:
Nice, right? Including the part where Letang jukes inside-out on poor Marcus Foligno to slide up the right boards.
OK, now, watch it again, but only Flower's head. There's one momentary turn of his head toward the front, attempting to locate Sid, Jake Guentzel or both to guard against Letang setting one up for a tap-in. And it's then that Letang clearly makes up his mind to try the severe-angle shot for himself.
I asked Letang afterward, and he explained in referring to Flower, "I think he was cheating a little on the pass. I did look a little to my left like I was going to pass. So I just let it go. Lucky goal."
Hardly.
“Tanger fooled me on that first one," Flower acknowledged. "Out front, there was a bunch of bodies there, and I opened up the short side. I should have stopped that one.”
Yep. Like he did on countless other occasions in practice settings that often resembled that soccer shootout with his sister.
"It's still weird to shoot on him in a game," Letang would say with a slight laugh. "But that's life."
For these lifelong amis, that's c'est la vie!
