Canes defenseman Haydn Fleury no longer in transit, now a regular on the back end
Haydn Fleury knows every inch of the highway from Raleigh to Charlotte.
“Made that trip 12 times,” the Carolina Hurricanes defenseman said this week.
One-way or round trip, Fleury was asked.
“Twelve round trips,” he said, smiling. “I should have sent the Canes a bill for my new tires.”
Fleury was caught up in a flurry of recalls from the Charlotte Checkers, the Canes’ American Hockey League affiliate, the past two seasons. He’d load up his BMW X5, turn on a podcast and hit the road, whether to Raleigh for NHL games or then back to Charlotte to jump into the Checkers lineup.
“It did seem quicker coming to Raleigh,” he joked of the trip.
Those back-and-forth days are over for the Canes’ former first-round draft pick. He signed a one-year NHL contract for $850,000 last July, all but assuring he would be in Raleigh for the duration of the 2019-20 season.
And Fleury has been needed — again.
When defenseman Calvin de Haan was injured late in the 2018-19 season, Fleury went into the Canes lineup. De Haan returned during the Stanley Cup playoffs, but then defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk dislocated a shoulder in the second round of the playoffs against the New York Islanders.
Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour again asked Fleury if he was ready. Next man up, all that. Fleury stepped in for van Riemsdyk in the hockey cauldron that was the playoffs. After the Canes were eliminated by the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference finals, he was back in Charlotte for the Checkers’ playoff run to a Calder Cup championship.
Van Riemsdyk wasn’t ready for full contact as the 2019-20 season began, meaning Fleury again was in the Canes lineup. After van Riemsdyk missed the first eight games, he and Fleury then alternated at times as the Canes’ sixth D-man — one playing, one a healthy scratch — after van Riemsdyk’s return.
But that defensive arrangement changed, completely, in mid-January. So did the role for each player.
Dougie Hamilton’s broken left fibula, in the Jan. 16 road game at Columbus, made regulars of both van Riemsdyk and Fleury. Van Riemsdyk eventually was placed in the top defensive pairing with Jaccob Slavin, replacing Hamilton, while Fleury joined Joel Edmundson in the third D pairing.
Often playing 13 or 14 minutes a game earlier in the season, van Riemsdyk had 20 or more minutes of ice time in five of the past eight games leading up to Friday’s matchup against the New York Rangers at PNC Arena. Van Riemsdyk once had that kind of defensive workload playing for the Chicago Blackhawks — he averaged almost 20 minutes a game in 2015-16 — but not since coming to the Canes.
“I’ve done it before and it’s something where you can draw on your experience,” van Riemsdyk said Thursday. “It’s not completely foreign to me and then I have a partner like Jaccob who is pretty easy on you. He’s so smart and he seems to make every play.
“Obviously the matchups are a little different. But every night is a challenge. Against the third- or fourth-line guys, they bring a different element and make it tough to play against. Maybe the top line guys have more skill and you have to defend them a little different, but whether they’re super skilled or more of a forechecking type of player, you want to take away their time and space and be up on them. It’s all the same.”
Fleury, 23, had 87 games of regular-season experience before this year — playing 67 in 2017-18 — and had not scored on 103 shots. That also has changed this season: his first NHL goal came Oct. 18 at Anaheim and he has added two more, although the Canes are relying more on his size (6-3, 208 pounds) and physicality than his offense.
“I’ve just been trying to do my thing — get shots through, skate, be physical when I can, and I think it has gone well so far,” Fleury said. “Confidence is the big thing, and feeling more comfortable. Playing with Eddy (Edmundson), he’s a real steady presence back there and allowed me to play my game. The minutes have gone up, which allows me to get in the game a little bit more and allows me to play with confidence.
“Even when (van Riemsdyk) and I were going in and out (of the lineup), I felt more comfortable with my game than I had in the past, that I was doing more offensively. In the last eight, nine games the offense has came and I’ve had a lot of chances on the offensive side and I’m really happy with that. And on the defensive side it’s a work in a progress and just trying to be more physical and eliminate stuff around my net.”
The Canes may be content to stick with their six defensemen and not make a move before Monday’s NHL trade deadline, and Brind’Amour has no complaints about the D-man group minus Hamilton, who possibly could return in late-March or April.
“No one guy is going to able to replace what he brings to us, what Dougie does,” Brind’Amour said. “It was going to be by committee and I think all of them, that whole D corps, has held up nicely considering what we lost.”
Fleury left Tuesday’s game against the Nashville Predators with an apparent injury after taking a hit from Austin Watson. That was a scare, but Fleury was back at practice Thursday.
A lot is expected of first-round picks and it has been no different for Fleury. The Canes made him the seventh overall selection of the 2014 NHL Draft — ahead of such players as forwards David Pastrnak of the Boston Bruins and Nikolaj Ehlers of the Winnipeg Jets, to name two — and he watched as the Canes picked defenseman Noah Hanifin in the first round in 2015 and immediately placed him in the NHL lineup at 18.
Hanifin had his rough patches his first three NHL seasons and was traded to Calgary in the 2018 deal that brought Hamilton to Carolina. Another former first-round pick, defenseman Jake Bean played his first two games with the Canes last season but continues to develop with the AHL Checkers in his second professional season.
Fleury’s younger brother, Cale, was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens in 2017 and the defenseman made his NHL debut this season — in the opener, against the Canes. Cale Fleury, 21, was sent down to the Laval Rocket of the AHL on Jan. 31 after playing 41 games for the Habs, and Haydn said he has tried to counsel him on staying patient, positive.
“You can’t hide as a D-man,” Haydn Fleury said. “I think sometimes you can come in as a young forward and they can hide you a bit. As a D-man you can get caught out there against some pretty good players.
“I do think it takes time. The confidence takes a little bit to come. I think once you start to figure out the league and what you can and can’t get away with, it becomes easier after that.”
Fleury believes he’s figuring it out. He still has the same BMW but his in-season mileage isn’t nearly as high.
This story was originally published February 21, 2020 at 1:36 PM with the headline "Canes defenseman Haydn Fleury no longer in transit, now a regular on the back end."
