Rumor: Peter DeBoer has chosen his goaltender for Game 4.

There has been a major goaltending controversy in the Las Vegas Golden Knights locker room and frankly it is one that I think will continue until the Golden Knights Stanley Cup run has come to an end, one way or another. 

The controversy stems from a battle for the net between Golden Knights goaltenders Marc Andre Fleury and Robin Lehner and it has been made all the more complicated by the fact that the Golden Knights made a mid-season coaching change and installed Peter DeBoer as the team's head coach. Fleury, who had previously been the only number one goaltender in the history of the Golden Knights franchise, was still the starter when DeBoer entered the fray but that all changed when the Golden Knights made a surprising move to acquire Lehner from the Chicago Blackhawks just prior to the National Hockey League's trade deadline. Lehner appeared in just 3 games for the Golden Knights before the break and was dominant in those performances recording a 1.67 goals against average and a .940 save percentage, performances that I believed paved the way for the controversy we see now.

After those performances COVID-19 caused the NHL season to come to a grinding halt and this resulted in a long layoff for both goaltenders before the eventual start of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Since then Lehner has been the better goaltender and as a result has earned the trust of DeBoer as the team's number one goaltender, something that Fleury has clearly not appreciated. Fleury's agent Allan Walsh stunned the hockey world when he revealed just how his client felt in a now infamous, and deleted, tweet.

So the big question coming into the weekend was whether or not DeBoer would continue to ride Lehner in both games of a back to back, the second game of which is set to be played this evening between the Golden Knights and Vancouver Canucks. I wouldn't blame DeBoer for losing faith in Fleury after the actions of his agent, but it does sound like Fleury may finally get another shot to show his stuff tonight after all. John Shannon, formerly of Sportsnet, reports that there is now an internal belief that Fleury will be the starter in Game 4. 

To be clear I am classifying this as mere rumor for now due to the fact that DeBoer has refused to confirm his starter for the game and also due in part to Lehner's outstanding performance in Game 3, something that I believe could further serve to influence DeBoer into lean towards Lehner again in this one.