At the risk of jinxing the Lightning’s most important player, let’s go ahead and take a look at some career milestones that Andrei Vasilevskiy could have in his sight this season. First off, these are all going to be personal achievements because he already owns just about every franchise record in the books. Yes Ben Bishop has him in career save percentage (.921 to .917) and goals against average (2.28 to 2.39) but a couple of good months could put Vasy right back on top.
First up is 300 wins. He’s currently sitting at 293 which ranks him 6th among active goalies. If he wins seven games before Frederik Andersen wins five, then Vasilevskiy will be the 40th goaltender in the history of the league to hit the 300 win mark. He also has a pretty good chance of besting Jacques Plante as the fastest player to reach that achievement. Plante did it in 528 games while Vasy is sitting at 477 games played. The Lightning netminder was the second-fastest to 250 wins, falling just short of Ken Dryden’s record. Dryden retired with 258 wins in 397 games over eight seasons, the Sandy Koufax of hockey.
Winning is what goaltenders do, scoring points is not. However, Vasilevskiy has an outside chance of overtaking Marc-Andre Fleury as the active leader in goaltender points. Vasy is sitting at 20 points while The Flower is at 22. Since becoming the full-time starter in 2016-17, Vasilevskiy has picked up at least two points in seven of his eight seasons. In his last four seasons, Fleury has just one assist in each of them. Both have a ways to go to catch Tom Barraso, the all-time leader with 48.
If Vasilevskiy makes it to 15,000 saves this year, he’ll become the 50th player to do so (actually, probably the 51st since Connor Hellebuyck is a lot closer). It’ll also mean the Bolts netminder is getting shelled. At 13,192 saves he would need to make 1,808 to reach the milestone. Only once has he hit that number and that came back in 2017-18 when he stopped 1,908 shots and had 8 shutouts. He’s only seen 1,800 shots three times in his career, which is probably a good thing.
Other Hockey News
Stan Bowman is still pondering the two offer sheets that St. Louis threw his way, but that hasn’t stopped him from making other moves. On Sunday the Oilers acquired Vasily Podkolzin from the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for a fourth-round pick in next year’s draft that originally belonged to the Ottawa Senators. The 23 year-old winger was the 10th overall pick in 2019 and has spent the last two seasons splitting time between the NHL and AHL. In 137 games with the Canucks he had 18 goals and 17 assists. He has a $1 million cap hit for the next two seasons. Is it possible he’s a Dylan Holloway replacement?
Update! Bowman wasn’t done yesterday as he dealt Cody Ceci and a third-round pick to San Jose for younger defenseman Ty Emberson. With the cap money saved, the Oilers should be able to match St. Louis’ offer for Philip Broberg.
There has been some concern that the quality of the uniforms might drop next year when Fanatics takes over as the league’s primary supplier. While the amount of padding underneath would make things a little less titillating than MLB’s See-Through Gate, it also looks like the quality shouldn’t suffer since the same company that’s been making the uniforms for almost 50 years will keep making them.
There are some pretty good ideas in this article throwing out ideas about where future outdoor games should be held. It wouldn’t be a shock to see the newest organization, The Utah Hockey Skaters Hockey Club of Hockey, featured in a game sooner than later, but instead of Rice-Eccles just outside of downtown Salt Lake, they should head down I-15 a little farther to Provo and host it at LaVell Edwards Stadium, home of the BYU Cougars. Sure, the no alcohol thing would be a problem, but the vistas are amazing.
Speaking of outdoor games, it looks like the Chicago sweaters for their open air game against the Blues has leaked. It has some elements of the 1991-92 anniversary jersey, but, as Second City Hockey pointed out, they haven’t gone full barber pole.
There are still some free agents out there for the taking and Daily FaceOff took the time to put a little list together. It’s topped by 35- year-old James Van Riemsdyk and also has old friend Tyler Johnson and his 17 goals from last season on it. Would Julien BriseBois sign anyone on this list to shore up the scoring depth? Probably not, but you never know. He still has a little cap room to play with and if someone like JVR or Max Pacioretty could theoretically sign a bonus-laden, 35+ plus contract that doesn’t have a huge cap hit this year.
Sean McIndoe goes into 10 weird NHL facts that have always bothered him. The Lightning and Phil Esposito get a mention for trading four first-round picks to the Flyers as part of the Chris Gratton fiasco. Boston swapping the next-to-last pick for the last pick of the 1997 draft so that they could say they had drafted first overall (Joe Thornton) and last overall (Jay Henderson) is pretty good.
With the PWHL expecting to reveal new uniforms in September, LJ Bachenheimer over at The Ice Garden took the time to rank the sweaters that will hopefully be one-and-done from last season. As always, the more teal, the better. Speaking of the PWHL, smart leagues learn from the mistakes of other leagues and make sure they have policies in place to prevent similar things from happening to them. Meredith Foster writes about what they should have learned from the Olympic boxing debacle.
