Andrei Vasilevskiy prefers to look ahead, even though his resume is already full of accomplishments that will land him in the Hockey Hall of Fame when he eventually hangs up his gear.
But the Lightning goaltender is only half joking when he says he hopes his best hockey is in front of him.
He’s healthy again, the long-lasting effects from 2023 back surgery mostly in his rear view. He’s feeling like his old self, capable of impacting a game like no other, especially in its most critical moments; the backbone of three straight Stanley Cup Final runs and back-to-back championships.
No NHL goaltender played more minutes than Vasilevskiy this season. He tied for the league lead with 63 games played, and his 2.18 goals-against average was the best of his career. Other numbers — goalie point shares and quality starts — back up that notion.
If it weren’t for Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck’s unworldly season, Vasilevskiy would be a shoo-in to win his second Vezina Trophy.
All that, however, is in the past. The postseason is when legends are made. Vasilevskiy know this well.
“You’re trying to get into the playoffs making sure that you’re in good shape, well-rested and with a clear mind,” he said. “That’s important. So, I think that’s probably the biggest thing is clear mind, because a lot of stuff is going on in the regular season. So, a clear mind is important for the playoffs.
“It’s a clean sheet. It’s a different season. It’s all yours now. Whatever happened in the regular season, good or bad, it’s all behind you. And you again start over to the new and the most hardest season.”
Overcoming injury
For Vasilevskiy, preparation is everything, and his offseason workout routines set the table for his seasons. For years, he’d felt invigorated by power lifting. It was easy to see the rewards — lift more, do more reps, feel stronger, have better endurance — until he pushed it too far two summers ago. One of his many power squats led to an injury in his lower back.
Vasilevskiy tried to avoid surgery, but he walked off the ice during the first practice of training camp in 2023 and had surgery a few days later. By no means was the procedure a quick fix. Vasilevskiy said he felt like he was playing on one leg all through the 2023-24 season. If he put too much pressure on his right side, he’d feel discomfort from his waist shoot down to his toes.
“Last year was hard,” Vasilevskiy said. “It wasn’t the hardest surgery, but because my nerve was kind of almost, like, smashed or whatever, that’s why my right side was pretty much off the whole season. To play the whole season with one leg, it wasn’t fun. You can tell by my numbers, by my standards, it was bad.”
Vasilevskiy’s numbers were uncharacteristic, his save percentage (.900) and goals-against average (2.90) the worst of his career.
“If I have two legs, probably you can add another 2% to my save percentage and another half-goal against,” he said. “... The doctor said right away, it will take years to heal completely, and I still feel it. But obviously, it’s a lot better this year, thank God. You can tell. But as it heals, we’ll get an extra 1% to my save percentage, I hope, every year.”
Returning to form
This past offseason was normal for Vasilevskiy. He ditched weightlifting and switched to more workouts based off his own weight. He stayed in Tampa during the summer instead of going home to Russia and worked with a new coach who included some martial arts work to help with mobility.
“It was less Bruce Lee and more Jean-Claude Van Damme, you know, like between-two-chairs stuff,” Vasilevskiy said. “... Less heavy weights, more goalie-nerd stuff sometimes. I’m not getting any younger, too. Even though I love to lift, but I can’t do that now. Maybe after retirement, because after retirement, who needs their lower back anyway?”
Vasilevskiy’s start to this season was better but still not up to his standards: a 10-8-1 record, 2.42 goals-against average and .907 save percentage. But in 44 games since Dec. 1, he arguably has been the league’s top goaltender (28-12-4, 2.05 GAA), his .926 save percentage better even than Hellebuyck’s (.924).
“It all obviously starts with goaltending, and Vasilevskiy in his first couple months wasn’t great,” said NHL Network analyst Mike Kelly, the director of analytics and insights for Sportlogiq. “... With Vasilevskiy, he’s coming off major surgery, and you never really know how a goalie’s going to respond. But since December on, he’s looked like the best version of himself for the most part.”
While numbers showed Vasilevskiy previously had a weakness on his high blocker side, Kelly said that could be explained by the issues he had with his right side.
“The volume of goals and the percentage of goals he was allowing there was considerably higher than average, but it’s not as pronounced this year,” Kelly said. …“There isn’t one thing that you would expect with a goalie, as good a goalie as he is, that you could say this year, ‘That’s how you beat this guy,’ that would alter a series.”
Finding a familiar playoff form
At age 30, Vasilevskiy already ranks 12th all-time in playoff wins. With Marc-Andre Fleury (92 wins) retiring after this season, Vasilevskiy (66) soon be the active leader. And he’s become the preeminent big-game goaltender in the playoffs. In 24 potential series-clinching games, he owns a 1.62 GAA and .942 save percentage. It’s no wonder that in this season’s players’ association poll, Vasilevskiy was the runaway choice for top goaltender.
He said his success is rooted in the way his teammates have played in front of him, their improved defense (the Lightning have gone from 22nd in goals allowed last season to third) reminding him of the teams that made deep playoff runs.
“I feel like after the (4 Nations Faceoff) break, we’ve been playing really close to that playoff hockey now defensively,” Vasilevskiy said. “All those Cup runs, we played kind of the same way. ... I feel like guys are really dialed in. It’s pretty simple. Just protect the middle, and we go from there. So, that’s what we’ve been doing lately.
“I’m not a big strategy guy. Usually, I don’t even know what we’re talking about during the meeting. My job is simple. You stop the pucks you see. You ones you don’t see, you hope will hit you. But the guys are executing the game plan, and that’s the result.”
