Marc-Andre Fleury still isn’t sure he will play again next season, but the Wild goaltender acknowledged Thursday he is more open to the idea than he was during fall camp.

It’s not difficult to see why.

“He’s still pretty good, isn’t he?” Wild general manager Bill Guerin told reporters on March 8, the NHL’s trade deadline this season.

Although he turned 39 last November, Fleury is still flashing the passion, raw athleticism and lightning reflexes that have moved him into second place in career wins for an NHL goalie, and made him one of only four to play 1,000 games — milestones cemented in this, his 20th, season.

“I always said that I would decide at the end of the season, but I felt like earlier, we were starting camp and all that, and I thought ‘This might be it,’ ” Fleury said. “Then I started feeling a little better, started having more fun.”

On Tuesday, Fleury stopped 30 shots in a 3-2 victory over Ottawa, improving to 11-4-3 since Jan. 6. And if you take out 26 minutes in a 6-0 loss at Los Angeles on March 20, Fleury is 11-3-3 with a 2.33 goals-against average and .912 save percentage in 19 appearances.

Certainly Fleury has nothing left to prove. He has been part of three Stanley Cup-winning teams in Pittsburgh, and helped expansion franchise Vegas win two Western Conference titles in four seasons. On Jan. 15, he passed Patrick Roy for second all time in wins by a goaltender with No. 552, shortly after joining wins leader Martin Brodeur, Roy and Roberto Luongo as the only goaltenders to play in 1,000 NHL games.

Playing in the final season of a two-year, $7 million contract extension, Fleury has been the Wild’s best goaltender. And after 20 years, he still approaches every game, and just about every practice, with visible enthusiasm.

“I do. I do,” he said. “But I don’t want to be the old guy that plays one too many. You know what I mean? That’s scary, too, I feel like. I don’t want to be a nuisance to the team, I want to help — and that’s when it feels better, too.”

It was generally assumed that Fleury, having reached his milestones and perhaps played in his 18th postseason, would retire after this season. Then the Wild would promote prospect Jesper Wallstedt to back up Filip Gustavsson, who earned a three-year, $11.25 million extension after being the NHL’s second-best goaltender in 2022-23.

If Fleury decides to continue playing, and Guerin decides he wants him for another year, it complicates what was once a simple plan for next season’s goaltending — although another season in the American Hockey League isn’t unreasonable for Wallstedt, who turns 22 on Nov. 14.

Asked last month how he would navigate trying to re-sign Fleury, Guerin said, “Very carefully.”

Fleury has a young family and is loath to move them for the fourth time since 2021. They like it here, he said. But he also stopped short of saying that it’s Minnesota or bust. Assuming he would only play for the Wild next season is “maybe a little overstated,” he said.

“But ideally, yeah,” he quickly added. “Not moving schools, not moving houses again and all that (would be) nice.”

While Fleury remains one of the NHL’s most athletic goaltenders, gloving slap shots and stacking pads the way he did for 14 years in Pittsburgh, he acknowledged after Thursday’s morning skate that it took a little longer for him to get up to speed in the fall.

He also said that wouldn’t necessarily convince him to retire, adding, “I know what to expect, right? So, maybe.”

The Wild’s game against Colorado on Thursday at Xcel Energy Center is the first of nine remaining regular-season games, with Minnesota eight points out of a wild-card spot. But the Wild are 31-18-6 since John Hynes became the coach on Nov. 28, and he’s been riding Fleury down the stretch.

“It’s still fun,” Fleury said. “I love winning, that feeling you get from winning and contributing. It’s good. It feels good inside.”

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A man fatally shot in St. Paul was a 41-year-old who loved traveling and being with his children and family, his longtime partner said Thursday.

Robert James Brown, of St. Paul, was shot in the Frogtown neighborhood before 1 a.m. Wednesday.

Robert James Brown (Courtesy of the family)

Police responded to multiple 911 callers reporting shots fired near Lafond Avenue and Grotto Street. Someone took Brown to Regions Hospital in a private vehicle and he was pronounced dead soon after, police said.

No one was under arrest as of Thursday afternoon. Police have asked witnesses to come forward and his family is requesting the same as they seek justice, said Ashly Saari, who said Brown referred to her as his life partner.

Brown grew up in Frogtown. He enjoyed all things sports, especially the Minnesota Vikings.

“He loved coaching both football and basketball, which turned into lifelong mentorships with many of the kids,” said Saari, who remembered him as a devoted dad.

Brown, who was known as Rob, was the kind of person who would embrace everyone as family, his brother said.

Investigators are asking anyone with information to contact them at 651-266-5650.

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For a pop-cultural century, in words and images, Los Angeles has been depicted as a seductively alien locale not like any other place in the galaxy. Its natural disaster quotient, its sterling variety of photogenic backdrops for moral rot and a wide world of sleaze, the sun, the secrets — all of it spells camera-ready trouble in paradise.

Its strangeness was made for, and by, film noir. Here’s one example: the Apple TV+ offering “Sugar,” starring Colin Farrell as a mysteriously well-off private eye specializing in missing-person cases. Creator and lead writer Mark Protosevich’s slippery fish of an eight-part series, with its first two episodes premiering April 5, owes debts all over town — to the legendary movies beloved by the title character, and to LA’s infinite capacity for new wrinkles along familiar fault lines.

There’s a whopper of a reveal at the story’s three-quarter juncture, so we’ll avoid that for a few paragraphs (no spoilers, though). We meet Farrell’s character, John Sugar, in a black-and-white Tokyo prologue, as he successfully if violently resolves the kidnapping and ransom case of a yakuza’s young son. Locating the missing, he murmurs in archetypal noir voiceover, makes for “a tough business. But steady.”

Amy Ryan plays a Joni Mitchell-type musical star ensnared in a sinister mystery in “Sugar.” (Jason LaVeris/Apple TV+)

The rest of “Sugar” unfolds mostly in color, and in greater as well as much, much lesser Los Angeles. Sugar’s new case involves the apparent disappearance of 25-year-old Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler), tarnished Hollywood royalty. She’s the daughter of movie director Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris, a casual, wry sort of skeeze). Olivia’s actress mother, as we’re told, died in a car accident in 1998. The family scion and true legend, producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell), hires Sugar for the search-and-rescue job, staying classically tight-lipped about his motives, though he’s frank about his pampered offspring, notably grandson and one-time child actor David (Nate Corddry).

Clearly Sugar’s hourly rate exceeds the average gumshoe’s. When in LA, he lives his monastic private life in a swank hotel, meeting with his apparent agency boss Ruby (played by the actress Kirby, who’s terrific) while tooling around town in a sleek blue Corvette. Ruby’s concerned about his health, and how this particular case might mess with this distinctly proper and contained man’s guarded psyche. In teasing half-fragments, the series tells us Sugar’s sister too went missing, once upon a time, and he’s coping uneasily with the trauma.

The labyrinth takes the detective into dark corners and other brutal disappearances all over the county. Amy Ryan, who excels in the role of a Joni Mitchell-type rock legend and Bernie Siegel’s ex-wife, becomes Sugar’s confidante and sounding board. Creator Protosevich treats this character’s struggles with addiction and recovery seriously and effectively; likewise, a #MeToo scandal enveloping the Siegel family develops into more than mere topical referencing. It’s at once plausible in the context of the story, and nicely threaded in the middle episodes. Fernando Meirelles (“City of God,” “The Constant Gardener”) directs five of the episodes with a fine eye for the destablizing composition; veteran TV director Adam Arkin handles the other three.

And now, obliquely, let’s deal with the whopper at the end of Episode 6. While “Sugar” strategically drip-drip-drips its hints regarding the detective’s past, and the nature of his organization’s larger mission, the reveal itself is nutty enough to toss a fair percentage of viewers overboard. It’s a testament to the series’ strengths — strong, steady performances; a nice glare and gloss to the imagery — that it very nearly recovers from the whopper.

After watching all eight segments, I felt differently about it, more accepting, I suppose. Other things bugged me more: the narrative’s wearying reliance on girls-in-torture-dungeons depravity, for one, and the well-motivated but nonetheless indulgent reliance on snippets from dozens of famous and less-familiar Old Hollywood titles, from “Sunset Boulevard” to “Vertigo” to “Kiss Me, Deadly.” These serve as attractive but clunky complements to Sugar’s own observations about the movies he adores, and the city he barely comprehends.

So it’s a bag you might call mixed. But I found a lot of it absorbing, and nearly every performance first-rate. Did I buy it? Uh, most of it? None of it? Enough of it? Something like that, yes. If enough viewers go for the twist, well, the open-ended ending of “Sugar” sets up a second season with ease.

“Sugar” — 3 stars (out of 4)

Rated: TV-MA (for violence, language, some nudity)

Running time: Eight episodes, about four-and-a-half hours total

How to watch: Apple TV+

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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