Long before he was a three-time Stanley Cup winning, Vezina winning, Hall of Fame-bound goaltender, Marc-Andre Fleury donned this AHL jersey for his final stint in the AHL for the Pens minor league team, Wilkes-Barre Scranton. He was the AHL goalie of the month for October before being recalled to the Pens on November 29th and never looking back.

The Penguins were set to draft in the third position of the 2003 entry draft, but wanted Fleury so badly that they traded with Florida to move up to the number one spot. That move panned out well for the Penguins, as Fleury appeared in the ‘08 finals, won in the ‘09 finals, and then won two more cups with them in ‘16 and ‘17. After being forced to trade Fleury in the 2017 expansion draft due to the superb play of rookie goaltender Matt Murray, Fleury lead the Vegas Golden Knights to the finals in 2018. In 2021, Fleury stamped his ticket to the hall of fame, winning the Vezina trophy as the best goaltender in the NHL. He is only the third goalie in NHL history to reach 500 wins, and on January 15th 2024, surpassed Patrick Roy to move into #2 all time.

This jersey is matched to his last away game against the Rochester Americans on November 25th, 2005, and features puck marks, net paint transfer in several places, and healthy amounts of pilling. At this time, many photographers were switching to digital cameras, and many teams failed to upload their film/slides to their site or team flickr pages, thus, tracking down photos of AHL games is exceedingly difficult. Luckily, in this case a fan took photos of Fleury during warm ups and through the glass you can clearly make out several definite sewing matches on the back “29” as well as a large thread on the L in “Fleury.”