Lightning confident in Vasilevskiy heading into Game 5

TAMPA --The Tampa Bay Lightning are not worried about goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy heading into Game 5 of the Eastern Conference First Round against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; TBS, CBC, SN, TVAS, BSSUN).

Vasilevskiy has allowed 19 goals in the series, including at least four in each of the past three games. His 4.33 goals-against-average and .856 save percentage are each career lows in the postseason.
It's a far cry from the dominant stretch of play Vasilevskiy had in the playoffs from 2020-22 when he led the Lightning to three straight Cup Finals, including winning the Cup in 2020 and 2021. In 2021, he won the Conn Smythe Trophy, going 16-7 with a 1.90 GAA, .937 save percentage and five shutouts in 23 games.
"If I look through this series...the Mitchell] Marner goal in Game 2, I'm sure he wants to have back," Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said Tuesday. "But after that, like realistically, what are we saying he's done wrong, other than make all the saves he's supposed to?"
The Lightning trail the best-of-7 series 3-1 after losing each of the past two games. They held a 4-1 lead going into the third period of Game 4 on Monday when the Maple Leafs scored three goals in a span of 6:20 to tie the game before Alex Kerfoot won it for Toronto at 4:14 of overtime.
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Three of the Maple Leafs' five goals in Game 4 came off of redirections in front of the net. Cooper said there wasn't much Vasilevskiy could have done to stop any of them. The Lightning also lost Game 3 in overtime, 4-3.
"We've got to leave the game with more goals on the board than them, that's basically what has to happen," Cooper said. "We've liked a lot of our game. Obviously that third period we'd like to have back. Regardless of how you get to overtime, you'd like to at least take one of those and we didn't take either."
Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said that Vasilevskiy is a "world-class goalie" and the plan has been to make things increasingly hard on him.
"For us, the more we can get to that net, makes it hard on anybody," Keefe said. "There's not many goalies in the League that really excel with traffic and pucks coming through and bodies and deflections, it's a really difficult thing."

Although Cooper may not have been aware of Keefe's comments, he had a similar take and challenged the Lightning to pick up their defensive game in front of Vasilevskiy, who has played every minute of every playoff game for them since 2020.
"If you look at [Monday] night, who's stopping the [Noel] Acciari tip?" Cooper said. "Nobody's stopping that. And who's stopping the [Auston] Matthews tip? Nobody's stopping that. That [Morgan] Rielly goal, we come off our check and completely screen our goalie. And the winning goal, was that Kerfoot? Who's stopping that? I don't know.
"No goalie in the league, take any goalie, take the best goalies in the history of the game, they're not stopping any of those. Those are unbelievable, 100-percent-chance-of-going-in goals. It's just tough that they're all happening in one game. I think the onus is on the guys in front of [Vasilevskiy] to be a little better."