“He’s still the best in the world.” The game with Dallas was a nightmare for Vasilevsky

“He’s still the best in the world.” The game with Dallas was a nightmare for Vasilevsky

Elena Kuznetsova December 3, 2023, 08:50 Moscow time Audio version: Your browser does not support the audio element.

Andrei missed six and was replaced, and Tampa lost 1-8. Kucherov’s 40th point of the season slightly sweetened the bitter pill.

Tampa is not in the best shape, at least not right now. It seems like they recently scored eight against Carolina in a game where Andrei Vasilevsky returned from surgery and Nikita Kucherov scored six points at once for the first time in his career, but since then there have been only losses.

Today’s game with Dallas stands out: for the first time this season, the Lightning lost four games in a row and for the first time they lost eight. The key moment, perhaps, was the terrible start: already in the 61st second, Tyler Seguin hit the puck on the fly and opened the scoring of the match. Tampa then lost the puck in their zone and Jason Robertson scored from a tight angle into the near corner. Just over a minute later, the Lightning missed Jamie Benn’s one-on-one game and then tried to catch up with a team that concedes less than three goals per game on average.

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Tampa tried and was able to get a goal back on a four-minute power play. Nikita Kucherov assisted Victor Hedman and extended his scoring streak to nine games. He also became the first player this season to score 40 points, and the first in Tampa Bay history to reach that mark in just 24 games!

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Here all the good things for Tampa ended and a real nightmare began. If in previous games they still showed good hockey, but the puck did not want to enter the goal, today nothing worked at all, neither in attack nor in defense. In the second half, they conceded three more times, and after 40 minutes of play, Vasilevsky, who had stopped only 19 of 25 shots, went to halftime.

Andrey had worse games. He doesn’t even need to go very far, last season (not the best by his standards) he conceded seven goals on two occasions. But if before he played on one of the best teams in the league, which won two Stanley Cups and reached the finals three years in a row, now he returned to a team that had already surpassed his peak. And it’s unlikely to get easier any time soon.

However, after the game, John Cooper expressed complete confidence in his first number: “Listen, sometimes the goalkeeper is unlucky. The first goal, the player hit the puck on the fly, the second, the puck somehow found its way into the net after a shot from a player who was used to scoring. These are difficult goals. We put ourselves in this situation. This is his fourth match in almost a year, he is still getting fit but he is still the best in the world. “It’s him we want in our goal.”

Jonas Johansson replaced Vasilevskiy and was responsible for two more missed goals in the third period. Dallas only had four field players without scoring, and the goals were scored by seven different players. For Tampa, only Austin Watson avoided deficits in the utility column, but he played less than 10 minutes. All others have a minimum of “-1”, Kucherov and Point have “-2”, Sergachev and Cirelli have “-3”, Chernak have “-4”.

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“It’s like a dark cloud is hanging over us right now,” Tampa defender Calvin de Haan concluded sadly.

“Throughout 82 games, there are such unpleasant defeats when it seems that the opponent has absolutely everything and you have nothing. That happen. You can usually forget about a match like that, move on, and get ready for the next one. But the difficulty is that in the three previous games we could have added or added some points. And now all of a sudden we’ve lost four in a row and this game has already become a sore point,” Cooper said.