Following back-to-back Stanley Cup wins, the Lightning have had a lot of question marks over the last few seasons. One of the main sources of concern since then has been the average play of goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. In the seasons after three straight years with trips to the Stanley Cup Final, the strain of long playoff runs has affected Vasilevskiy with the fatigue clearly showing. The wear and tear proved to be too much this past summer as Vasilevskiy was due to miss the first two months of the season with offseason back surgery.
Once his recovery was over the Big Cat made his season debut in November. His first test of the season would be his toughest as he was tasked with trying to shut down the formidable Caroline Hurricanes. The Lightning would end up walking away with an 8-2 victory, while Vasilevskiy stopped 22 of the 24 shots he faced. Safe to say this was a great result in a game in which things could have gone very wrong for the Russian goaltender.
What followed that satisfying outing was a season of mostly average play where Vasilevskiy did just enough to end the year with 30 wins. With that tally, Vasilevskiy became the 16th goaltender in NHL history to win 30 or more games in seven seasons. Regardless of the accolade, most Lightning fans would agree that there was more untapped to the veteran's game.
It was evident going into the first-round playoff matchup against the Florida Panthers that every player wearing blue and white would have to play almost perfectly if Tampa was to have a chance of advancing. Unfortunately, that was not the case for a majority of the team as the Lightning were outmatched throughout the series. What was evident was that Andrei Vasilevskiy not only had more left in the tank, but he was able to regain his Vezina Trophy form. Vasilevskiy was able to put up a save percentage of .897 while notching a goals-against average of 3.22 to finish the five-game series.
Even though the Lightning were unable to achieve their goal of a deep playoff run, they should rest easy this summer with the thought of Andrei Vasilevskiy potentially turning back to his former top-level form in the 2024-25 NHL season. The hope is that Tampa Bay will be able to build around that momentum Vasilevskiy started in order to get back to their end goal of winning a fourth Stanley Cup.