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MONTREAL — Andrei Vasilevskiy had no clue what the message was in his dressing room before overtime Friday night.
That didn’t seem to concern him.
“To be honest, I didn’t really hear. I was kind of one-on-one with my thoughts,” the first star of Game 6 said. “Same as the crowd here. I don’t hear anything. Same as in the locker room. I don’t listen to anything.”
Which made the media members chuckle.
“No, seriously, too much is going on in my head to listen,’’ Vasilevskiy said.
Hey, whatever works.
No. 88 was all-world Friday night to give his Tampa Bay Lightning a chance to live another day and force Game 7, his 30-save shutout just enough to outduel an equally impressive Jakub Dobeš in a 1-0 win.
“Best goalie in the world for a reason,” Lightning star Jake Guentzel said. “He gives us a chance every night. Some of the saves he made, they were just incredible saves.”
Yes, they were. Canadiens phenom Ivan Demidov surely wasn’t going to sleep Friday night. He was going to have Vasilevskiy in his nightmares, stoning him point-blank twice in Game 6.
It was an absolute gem of a performance from the past Vezina Trophy and Conn Smythe Trophy winner.
“That’s just one (less) thing off your mind, you don’t have to worry about that big guy back there,” Lightning winger Brandon Hagel said. “Because you know he’s going to be kicking ’em for you and he’s going to give you everything he possibly has. You can just go out there and play your game and worry about yourself because you know he’s going to make that save … He did that all night for us.”
Just don’t call it a redemption effort.
I asked Vasilevskiy postgame if it felt good to have that kind of bounce-back performance after what happened in Game 5.
“What happened in Game 5?” Vasilevskiy calmly directed back.
To which I suggested he might have wanted back the game-winner from Alexandre Texier.
“I mean, it was a good shot,” he said, shrugging.
We’ll agree to disagree on that one, but there’s zero disagreement on what happened on Friday night. Tampa’s star goalie is the No. 1 reason there’s a Game 7 Sunday night in Tampa.
Set in the backdrop of an electric atmosphere at the Bell Centre, with angst-filled fans oohing and aahing as each Montreal scoring chance got swatted away, Vasilevskiy had zero margin for error. He had to be perfect or the season was over.
“I’m trying to be locked in every game,” Vasilevskiy said. “Tonight was obviously very important. Yeah, if there would have been a mistake, it would have been really costly.”
The elephant in the room the past few playoff years for Tampa is that Vasilevskiy struggled in playoff losses to the Florida Panthers. That’s just the reality of the numbers.
So when he gave up that soft goal to Texier in Game 5, it made you wonder. But it didn’t make the head coach wonder. Not for one second.
“The bigger the stakes, the more intense the game, he seems to rise to the occasion,” Jon Cooper said. “This will be looked at as a goaltender battle because it was a 1-0 game in overtime. But it’s the saves you make and the timing of the saves. You take a penalty in overtime. On (Lane) Hutson, that’s a big-time save. We kill it off and score a minute later. But that’s the timing of it. That’s the rising to the occasion that we’ve seen him do time and time again.”
Behind the scenes, Vasilevskiy is known to have quite the personality; he’s a pretty funny guy. This juxtaposes his incredible preparation when he’s all business.
“The Big Cat jokes around at times,” said Game 6 overtime scorer Gage Goncalves. “But it’s pretty fun being on the outside looking into that, his preparation every single day, whether it’s practice, pregame skate or going into a game … And watching him (before overtime), just taking a look over in the dressing room, you just knew in the back of your mind you didn’t have to worry about that guy. His preparation is unbelievable and that’s what makes him the best goalie in the world.”
And because of him, we’ve got Sunday’s drama coming at us. What an unbelievable series it’s been. Six one-goal games, four overtime endings. Of course, it had to go seven games.
“Both teams had 106 points this season, they’re a really, really good hockey team over there; we’re a really, really good hockey team here,” Hagel said. “I don’t think we expected anything else other than what’s going on here. They have incredible players, everything. They’ve got everything over there, and we think we’ve got everything over here. The series is going like we expected it to. It’s going to be come down to one game. And I’m excited.”
For Tampa Bay, it is a chance to justify why so many people thought the Lightning were going deep this year. And erase the narrative that’s forming that they’re first-round fodder after three consecutive years being knocked out early.
There’s still so much to be determined on Sunday between those two scenarios.
Which is why, while Friday night was an incredible game and a season-saving win, the postgame message in the dressing room was also one of a veteran team.
“That was the big thing in the locker room after we won. Sure, guys were pumped. But we haven’t won anything yet,” Cooper said. “All we did was win a game to send us back to Tampa. And keep our season alive. You don’t want to rain on the parade because, what a win by the guys. But we haven’t accomplished anything yet.”
