The Lightning aren’t doing a good enough job of protecting Andrei Vasilevskiy

It’s been a disappointing start to the season for the Tampa Bay Lightning, a talented team that owns a 1-2-1 record and has allowed five goals in both of its regulation losses.

The Bolts have gotten big production from their star forwards Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point and Jake Guentzel, but the team defense has been in a bad place. Tampa is allowing the fourth most high-danger scoring chances against per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, and franchise goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy has been put in a tough place as a result.

The veteran stalwart is winless in his three starts this season, and he owns a .870 save percentage and a 4.08 goals against average. He’s of course much better than those numbers suggest, so it will be on the team in front of him to make his job more manageable as the season goes along.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed where things have gone wrong for the Lightning on the defensive side of the puck.

Tyler Yaremchuk: One team who’s still stuck at that one win mark through four games is the Tampa Bay Lightning, and it’s easy to look at Andrei Vasilevskiy’s numbers and wonder what’s going on there. What’s your concern level with Vasilevskiy?

Carter Hutton: I wouldn’t put it as high, maybe a 3 on my concern meter with Vasilevskiy, just because of his history. I guess it’s more my worry about their back end and how they’re going to protect it and insulate it in a division that just starts to logjam up. I think Vasilevskiy will play better. My thing is I just don’t think you can win the way Tampa wants to win in the new NHL in that division. They like to run and gun, they like to create offense, they want to beat you 5-4 in these shootout games. I think that’s more concerning than I am worried about Vasilevskiy.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…