Well, here we are.

Vegas is in the Cup Final and the result is so antithetical to any reasonable expectation of their ceiling that people are well and truly scrambling to come up with reasons why. Not that this hasn’t been the case more or less since Oct. 1, of course, because their regular-season results certainly highlighted a disconnect from the jump. But now, just four wins away from immortality, people are beyond baffled.

The post-facto explanations for why Vegas had 109 points in the regular season and then mowed through the first three rounds of the playoffs in just 15 games have all necessarily veered into the “intangibles” territory because there is no tangible way to explain their success. Hindsight being what it is, coupled the general drive among hockey’s commentary class (call them the unintelligencia) to accept as irrefutable mystical thinking over any whatever rationality people can actually offer, comes the idea that Vegas has more or less done what was previously proven impossible: Figured Out Shot Quality.

Unlike the Avalanche, Leafs, Flames, Panthers, Wild, Blue Jackets, Stars who were brushed aside by regression when the puck stopped bouncing their way, the only way to explain Vegas’s continued flouting of probability can only have a deeper meaning that expected goals or other metrics that are proven to be good indicators of long-term success suggest.

What’s interesting is that all this talk revolves around a team based in Vegas, where “luck” is a currency but everyone understands inherently that every good bounce of the roulette wheel, perfect flop at the poker table, or jackpot pull of the slot machine isn’t luck at all. It is, instead, understood to be a function of pure mathematical probability.

Hockey people nonetheless reject the idea that you could have six hot hours at the craps table outright. It must be Something They’re Doing Differently from most other people who have ever picked up a pair of dice.

Let’s get something out of the way first and foremost and say that the reason Vegas, winners of nine one-goal games in these playoffs, is in the Cup Final is down to two factors: Marc-Andre Fleury (by far the biggest reason) and its phenomenal first line.

Smith-Karlsson-Marchessault has been incredible in every facet of the game, for sure and absolutely. The extent to which they are dominating opponents almost can’t be overstated. They’re getting a lot of attention and deserve all of it.

However, the number of goals Fleury has saved above any reasonable expectation for performance is incredible; if he were “merely” a .920 goaltender in these playoffs (and .920 is a phenomenal number, usually good enough to get you into the Vezina conversation if your team is any good) he would have given up an extra 14 goals in these 15 games. Again, Vegas has won nine of its 12 games by a single goal or an empty-netter, so even if Fleury were merely “above-average” the precarity of Vegas’s success would increase significantly, and would have likely run out a while ago.

This isn’t to say that Fleury hasn’t been deserving of all the success he’s brought to Vegas. Far from it. If you stop the pucks you deserve the accolades. The argument isn’t that he’s been lucky (he absolutely has, that’s irrefutable) but rather that this is a run of success literally unprecedented in his career. Since he came back from injury on Dec. 12, he’s a .932 goalie in 56 appearances across the regular season and playoffs. There has never ever been a 56-game run in Fleury’s previous 806 career games in which he was .932.

So the question is: To what do we attribute it? Could the “change of scenery” — with the new goalie coach, new expectations, new system, new teammates, etc. — have an impact? Sure. It almost certainly changed his approach to the game. But could it have so significant an impact that he turned into a much better goaltender than his previous 800 games at the NHL level would indicate? If you think he took a big step forward at age 33, well, I’m honestly not sure what to tell you.

Tim Thomas, of course, had a late-career renaissance at around the same period of his life; from ages 33 to 37, he was a .926 goaltender. He cleared .910 in only one other season before or after. Could Fleury have somehow bottled the same Ponce de Leon elixir? I mean, I guess so, but isn’t the far more likely explanation that this is just 60-ish games of outsized success? I had a Vegas fan yesterday telling me goalies don’t simply “get hot” for 60 games, but here’s the thing: It happens literally every season. Just not to this extent.

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