Vasilevskiy makes 30 saves, Lightning shut out Avalanche

TAMPA --Andrei Vasilevskiy made 30 saves, and Brandon Hagel had two goals and an assist for the Tampa Bay Lightning in a 5-0 win against the Colorado Avalanche at Amalie Arena on Thursday.

It was Vasilevskiy's first regular-season shutout since Nov. 26, 2021, against the Seattle Kraken.
"It's great. Hopefully they come in bunches," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "He's got a bunch of them (28), but it's weird. Some years you get a ton of them, and some years they get broken up late. It's happened to him a couple of times this year."
Brayden Point had a goal and an assist, and Alex Killorn had three assists for Tampa Bay (33-16-2), which went 2-for-3 on the power play after losing its first two games after the All-Star break (0-1-1).
"I'm glad that we won. That's the one thing that matters, not the shutout," Vasilevskiy said. "As long as we have the win, I don't care."
Alexandar Georgiev made 27 saves for Colorado (27-19-4), which is 0-1-1 in the first two games of a three-game road trip that concludes Saturday at the Florida Panthers.

It was the first game between the teams since last season's Stanley Cup Final, which the Avalanche won in six games. They will play again at Colorado on Feb. 14.
"I liked the start of the game. I thought both teams were playing hard," Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. "I felt like they were more competitive than us in certain areas of the game as the game went on."
Corey Perry gave the Lightning a 1-0 lead when he scored on a backhand for a power-play goal at 15:15 of the first period.
Hagel made it 2-0 at 8:32 of the second period from the low slot off a pass from Anthony Cirelli (two assists).
The Hagel-Cirelli-Killorn line combined for eight points (two goals, six assists).
"We know our job is to shut guys down, slow them down a little bit," Hagel said. "When we can score, it's just a positive. It feels good. Everyone was working hard with 'Tony' beating two guys to the puck and getting the puck to me."
Point extended the lead to 3-0 at 10:29 with a power-play goal when he touched the puck after it deflected off Colorado forward Valeri Nichushkin.
"The second power-play goal they got was kind of a backbreaker," Bednar said. "And then our scoring chances kind of dried up from there."

Hagel made it 4-0 at 18:07 with a wrist shot from the edge of the right face-off circle off a pass from Killorn.
"I thought tonight we played very well, it's obviously a matchup we circled at the beginning of the year," Killorn said. "For us now going on the road that was a huge game to get the momentum going the right way."
Mikhail Sergachev scored with a shot from the point through traffic at 5:44 of the third period for the 5-0 final.
The Avalanche, who played without defenseman Cale Makar because of an upper-body injury, went 0-for-2 on the power play and have scored one goal in their first two games after the All-Star break.
"We've had two bad games. Offensively, we have to be better," Colorado forward Mikko Rantanen said. "[We're] not finishing. In the first period, we were playing good and creating enough chances to score. We had two power plays when it was 1-0. We've got to find a way to score."
NOTES: Avalanche forward Evan Rodrigues took a puck to the face in the third period and did not return. There was no update. ... Tampa Bay forward Nicholas Paul was a late scratch because of an undisclosed injury. Cooper said he hopes it's not a long-term issue. … Forward Nikita Kucherov set a Lightning record by extending his home point streak to 17 games. He had a 16-game run at home from Nov. 21, 2018, to Feb. 5, 2019. … Vasilevskiy is 11-0-0 at home since Dec. 10.