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WILKES-BARRE -- It's not that Marc-Andre Fleury needed the extra work. Not after playing 62 games -- 50 of them in the NHL -- during the regular season.

And it's not as if the Penguins' American Hockey League minor-league team was desperate for help at Fleury's position. Not when Dany Sabourin had just been named the league's outstanding goaltender.

No, Fleury was sent to Wilkes-Barre after the Penguins' season ended April 18 for one real reason: To win some games and, in the process, shake the tag -- fair or otherwise -- that he couldn't produce under pressure.

That's something he hadn't accomplished -- or had many opportunities to do, for that matter -- since he was in junior hockey.

Trouble is, Penguins general manager Craig Patrick lost his job before the finer points of how Fleury and Sabourin were to be used could be worked out.

Odds are, though, that nothing in that script would have called for Fleury to appear just once during the first five games of the Baby Penguins' opening-round series against Bridgeport.

But circumstances -- including a 3-2 Game 2 loss to the Sound Tigers with Fleury in goal, followed by victories when Sabourin played in Games 3 and 4 -- conspired to make that happen. And to make a lot of people wonder why Fleury had been added to the Baby Penguins' playoff roster.

The answer to that question finally came when the Baby Penguins faced elimination in Games 6 and 7, and Fleury earned victories in both. On Friday, he stopped 32 shots in a 3-2 triumph at Bridgeport; 24 hours later, he made 27 stops in a series-clinching, 5-4 decision at home.

"He played really well," coach Joe Mullen said. "The two goals [in Game 6] that they scored on him, he couldn't do anything about. ... In Game 7, he was solid all the way through. I was happy with the way he played."

Happy enough to give Fleury his third consecutive start last night. But there was precious little for Mullen to like about the way his team put itself in a four-goal hole in the first 29 minutes of what became a 5-4 loss to Hershey in Game 1 of their second-round series at Wachovia Arena.

Even though Fleury hardly was the main culprit in the defeat -- the Bears' 36-20 advantage in shots represented an accurate reflection of how the game played out -- Sabourin is the front-runner to start when the teams meet again in Game 2 tomorrow night.

But while Mullen has enough faith in Sabourin that he won't hesitate to make a switch -- "I can't make a bad decision putting either one of those in," he said -- he does believe that those two victories against the Sound Tigers will have a lasting effect on Fleury and his confidence.

"That's one reason I wanted to put him in that situation," Mullen said. "These are the type of games he needs to learn to win. Sooner or later, he was going to do it. I was just hoping this was going to be the time."

It was, and a lot of people believe that, because of those victories, this spring will prove to be a significant point in Fleury's career. Fleury, it should be noted, isn't one of them.

That's mostly because he never believed his lack of postseason success was a major concern, that losing his only three pro playoff decisions before this year hardly constituted a meaningful trend.

"I just want to win now because I want to win with these guys," he said. "Not because I want to show people."

Something else he didn't want to do was make a fuss or cause a disruption over his limited workload early in the Bridgeport series.

"I couldn't say anything, because Dany was playing great," Fleury said. "He got two wins in a row, and everything was working well. I just waited until he gave me another game."

Fleury finally got that opportunity when the Baby Penguins were in danger of being knocked out of the playoffs, and he took advantage of it.

And while the Game 1 loss to Hershey might lead to a goaltending switch for Game 2, it hardly guarantees that Fleury will be nailed to the far end of the bench for the rest of the spring.

"We have a good team," he said. "I know I'll get a chance to win some games."

Which, after all, was the whole point.