Due to injury and illne s, the lineup has been at times unrecognizable this season. and have had to skate Tyler Thornburg Jersey with a revolving door of linemates. The depth on the roster and in the minor leagues has been constantly tested. At times they've seemed to have had more callups skating in games than players that started the season on the NHL roster.Even with all of that nece sary roster shuffling, the team has still found a ton of succe s on the ice and entering the weekend remains near the top of the NHL standings. Having world-cla s players like Crosby and Malkin playing at MVP levels can certainly mask a lot of flaws, but one of the few constants in the lineup this season has been the play of starting goaltender .Depending on what side you fall on in the seemingly never-ending debate regarding his skill and importance, this may come as a bit of a surprise.We talked about this back in November , it's awfully difficult to find a middle ground on Fleury and his performance. Differing sides seem to reach for the most extreme take they can get their hands to satisfy their desire to give him credit for that goes well, or pin of the blame on him when something goes wrong. Like most goalies, he has had his share of highs and lows in the NHL. He was a key player on a team that went to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals in 2008 and '09, and he has been benched in the playoffs and had some nightmare postseason performances in the years that followed. In the past, I have been critical of the Penguins' commitment to Fleury, not nece sarily because he is a bad goalie (he is not -- he is a perfectly adequate NHL starting goalie and more durable than most) but because there are almost always other, le s expensive players available at the Pedro Martinez Jersey position every year who can give you the same performance he has given the Penguins. It's not the player, it's the position and the supply and demand that comes with it in the NHL. It's a cold, calculating and emotionle s approach to take, but hey, that's life in a salary cap sport. To me, it's a heck of a lot easier to find a decent goalie than it is to find a top-line winger or top-pairing defenseman for $5 million a year.Many others, particularly in Pittsburgh (note: I am based in Pittsburgh so I see this team a lot) and obviously within the Pittsburgh front office do not share this opinion. A lot comes from the Stanley Cup ring he owns. Some of it is because he has a fantastic personality and ridiculous athleticism for a goalie that allows him to make some incredible saves that will appear on highlight reels. Either way, he is a popular player in some circles, even if the producution Roger Clemens Jersey isn't always there when it comes to the top goalies in the league (remember, he has only once finished a season in the top 10 in save percentage, and no, that's not always because of the system or defense in front of him). Sometimes the narrative doesn't match reality.And of course, that works in the other direction as well.Lately, though, Fleury has legitimately been playing at a level that puts him among the NHL's top goalies, and through the first two months of the season there are probably only, at most, two or three other goalies in the NHL who can make an argument for matching his level of play. Entering Saturday he is in the top five in both total save percentage and even-strength save percentage, while his six shutouts lead the league. The only other goalie in the NHL with more than shutouts is former Vezina winner of the New York Rangers, with five.Two of those shutouts for Fleury came in 1-0 wins, including Thursday's game against the Colorado Avalanche. Needle s to say, it has been an impre sive stretch of play.I went back over Fleury's career and broke it down into 20-game segments, which is shown by rolling 20-game save percentages in the table below, to Jackie Bradley Jr Jersey see if he has ever played at such a level at any point in his career. His current 20-game stretch is, obviously, at the very far right, and there are not many points higher than that one, with the obvious exception of one huge spike during the 2007-08 season. That was probably his best overall performance to date in the NHL, both the regular season and the ensuing playoff run which sometimes gets forgotten, and was actually more impre sive than the Cup-winning performance the following season.But the 2013 playoffs were about as disastrous of a performance as Fleury has had in the NHL. It ultimately ended with him being benched in favor of Tomas Vokoun, who then led the Penguins to the Eastern Conference finals. Then a couple of things changed for Fleury. He visited with a sports psychologist before the start of the next season, and the team brought in a new goalie coach, Mike Bales, who is currently in his second season with the team, developments that could have certainly played some sort of role in his level of play this season.But when it comes to the Penguins, and especially Fleury, there is a mindset that no matter what they do (or what he does) in the regular season it doesn't mean anything unle s they do it in the postseason. There is a constant boredom with the regular season and a "let's see what happens in the playoffs" mindset, and that's certainly popping up again right now when it comes to Fleury's level of play. That's not unfair because if you're being honest about things, his level of play is, at some point, going to drop off a bit. Not because he's going to suddenly "lose it," but because that Dustin Pedroia Jersey 's what goalies do (just look at his performance in the above chart; there is nothing steady or consistent about it, and the same would be true for every other goalie in the NHL) and it's almost unheard of for a goalie to finish a year with a save percentage at or above the .930 mark Fleury currently has.Some regre sion to the mean is to be expected, but the key is going to be avoiding those bottoming-out stretches that have plagued him at times throughout is career.And really, given the team the Penguins are capable of putting on the ice when they are healthy, that should be good enough.