- Marc-Andre Fleury was inducted into the QMJHL Hall of Fame on Wednesday night in Quebec City
- A video message from Sidney Crosby brought the three-time Stanley Cup winner to tears
- Read below for his speech, the Cape Breton billet family he thanked and the rest of the class
Marc-Andre Fleury got through most of his Hall of Fame night in one piece. Then Sidney Crosby showed up on the big screen.
The QMJHL inducted Fleury on Wednesday at Theatre Le Capitole in Quebec City, and partway through his tribute the room watched a video message from his old Penguins captain, sent in from Pittsburgh. Fleury did not make it through that one dry-eyed.
Watch the moment Crosby’s message landed:
Those two shared a Pittsburgh locker room for a dozen years and won three Stanley Cups together. Crosby could not be in the building, so he taped his part instead.
Fleury spent a good chunk of his own speech on the island that raised him as a teenager.
“When I was drafted by Cape Breton, I didn’t even know where it was,” Fleury said.
He went 16th overall to the Screaming Eagles in 2000 and moved in with Bob and Angela Hawkins in Sydney River, Nova Scotia, at 15 years old without speaking a word of English. Their son taught him the language. Bob taught him to drive.
That family came up again in an interview with CBC News before the ceremony.
“I showed up on their doorstep when I was 15 and they were such an incredible family to me,” he said. “We’ve shared a lot of good and tougher moments together with the Eagles and Sydney and we’ve kept in touch all these years.”
Take a look at the part of the speech aimed at the Hawkins family:
Four others went in alongside him:
- Donald Audette, a 12th-round junior pick who scored 509 NHL points
- David-Alexandre Beauregard, who played more than 1,000 pro games after losing an eye in 1994
- Jean-Marc Richard, a defenseman with over 300 junior points
- Jacques Tanguay, the longtime Quebec Remparts owner, as a builder
Cape Breton got 151 games out of Fleury, 63 wins and a .908 save percentage. Pittsburgh took him first overall in 2003, and he walked away 21 seasons later with 575 wins, second only to Martin Brodeur, plus a Vezina and those three rings. The Penguins are putting him in their own Hall of Fame this year too.
Catch the full 11-minute speech:
The Hawkins family made the trip from Cape Breton to sit in the room for it. Fleury called them the moment he got the news.
