The Tampa Bay Lightning will have to find a temporary solution in front of their net. The organization announced Thursday that its starting goalkeeper Andrei Vasilevskiy underwent surgery and will miss the first two months of the season.
Lightning general manager and vice-president Julien BriseBois said Vasilevskiy successfully underwent a microdiscectomy Thursday morning, an operation that removes a herniated lumbar disc.
For the moment, the Lightning have Jonas Johansson in their ranks in net, as well as prospect Hugo Alnefelt and newcomer Matt Tomkins, who spent the last two seasons in Sweden.
Tampa therefore finds itself facing two major challenges. The first is athletic: Vasilevskiy has been one of the busiest goalies in recent years, with the Lightning being one of the last teams to lean so heavily on their starting goaltender. He is one of only four goaltenders in the NHL to have started 75% of his team’s regular season games since the start of the 2020-2021 season.
In the NHL, no one played more hockey from the 2020 playoffs until the end of last season, 14,769 minutes over 294 starts. His closest pursuer in terms of starts, Connor Hellebuyck of the Winnipeg Jets, played 46 fewer.
Vasilevskiy was a starter for three consecutive Stanley Cup Final appearances. The 29-year-old Russian won the Vezina Trophy in 2019, then the Conn Smythe, awarded to the most valuable player of his team in the playoffs, in 2021… in addition to being crowned twice, in 2020 and 2021.
All this to say that Andrei Vasilevskiy played a lot of hockey, and his body ended up suffering the consequences. He is expected to miss at least 25 games at the start of the season.
The other issue is financial. The Lightning don’t really have any wiggle room under the salary cap. If the team chooses to look for another NHL goalie to make up for the loss of the one considered the best jailer in the world, it risks exceeding the allowable limit when the Russian returns to the game.
Unless one of the three aforementioned goalies manages to establish themselves between now and the opening game against the Nashville Predators on October 10.
With the Associated Press