Fleury still loved in Penguins locker room

PITTSBURGH -- The old ointment-in-the-underwear trick. Oh, Marc-Andre Fleury got Tom Kuhnhackl. Got him good. After the Pittsburgh Penguins practiced one day, Kuhnhackl showered, dressed and headed home. He didn't get far before he started to, uh, overheat.

"I had to pull over and take my pants off and take my underwear off," Kuhnhackl said. "It was so hot, it was burning like hell. But I'm glad he had a good time."
Kuhnhackl had to laugh.
"Oh, for sure," Kuhnhackl said. "You can't get mad at that. It's funny."
RELATED: [Fleury excited for return to Pittsburgh]
It's a window into why Fleury remains beloved in the Penguins locker room as he returns to PPG Paints Arena on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; SN1, SNE, SNO, TVA Sports, ATTSN-PT, ATTSN-RM, NHL.TV) for the first time since the Vegas Golden Knights claimed him in the NHL Expansion Draft on June 21.
First, there is Fleury the goaltender. The Penguins took him No. 1 in the 2003 NHL Draft. He played 13 seasons for them, winning the Stanley Cup three times and setting franchise records for wins (375) and shutouts (44).
Then there is Fleury the person. A prankster, a professional, smiling in good times and bad, he brought joy to the rink. Asked what he learned from him, captain Sidney Crosby said: "His attitude." Asked what he missed about him, defenseman Kris Letang said: "Everything." Fleury was the Penguins' pressure valve.

"In the room he's so laid-back, calms everybody down," Letang said. "After a loss, the next morning when you come to the rink, he's always happy. He's always ready to go. He cheers us up all the time."
He still does, just from the memories.
"My favorite one is when he got those stink bombs," Crosby said. "I don't know if you've ever seen those. They're just little glass things that you break, and they reek. I think he got at least four or five guys' hotel rooms with those and just found a way to basically evacuate a floor of a hotel with those stink bombs. He had so many [pranks].
"That's an example of just how he kept it loose, but that was kind of a daily thing. There was something like that every day. You didn't know who the target was, but he was going to find a way to get somebody."
Fleury got forward Bryan Rust once. When Rust took the ice for practice at PPG Paints Arena, he found his clothes hanging from the rafters 15 or 20 feet off the ice with a name tag on them.
"Just dangling there," Rust said. "Shoes. Jacket. Pants. Shirt. Shorts."
Fleury got Kuhnhackl another time. After practice in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, Kuhnhackl showered, dressed and couldn't find his car keys. Then he couldn't find his car.
"I'm like, 'Where the hell is my car? Did I park somewhere else?'" Kuhnhackl said. "And I look over, there's a huge pile of fans just in a circle."
Not only had Fleury moved Kuhnhackl's car, he had placed an erasable marker on the windshield so fans could write on it.
Fleury got some strangers one day in Los Angeles. Walking home from dinner, a group of Penguins passed an outdoor skating rink. Fleury rented skates and pretended he was a novice, chopping around the ice stiff-legged, going faster and faster and faster -- until he tumbled over the wall.
People scrambled to make sure he was OK, not knowing who he was or what he was doing. His teammates howled.
"It was one of the funnier things I've seen," defenseman Ian Cole said. "Just the security guards' reaction, these high-school kids freaking out, thinking somebody killed themselves on the outdoor rink."

It's one thing when things are going well, another when they aren't. Fleury got hurt, got benched, lost his job, and stayed upbeat. After the Penguins won the Cup last year, he handed it to his successor, Matt Murray.
"It's a tough thing mentally to go through, and he just didn't let that trickle down through the team," Crosby said. "Internally, I think it was tough, but he just kept a smile on his face, kept working hard, and just was the same guy no matter what."
Three times Monday, coach Mike Sullivan called Fleury a "great teammate."
"We had some very difficult decisions. We tried to do what we thought was best for the hockey team and Marc was just such a professional in how he handled the whole thing," Sullivan said. "I know I can speak for myself. I can tell you how appreciative I am of how professional he was.
"There were a couple of tough conversations. Those conversations might have been a couple of the hardest conversations that I've ever had as a coach, and the reason is because of how highly I think of him and we think of him."
That's "we." Present tense.
"Everyone loves him," Cole said. "He's, I think, universally loved. How many people this year have said, 'Oh, man, how much do you guys miss Marc-Andre Fleury?' He's not here, but people are still talking about him with glowing admiration. I think that's a great measure of the kind of energy and character that he brought not only to this team but the city."