Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy is within striking distance of some top hardware. He’s been named a finalist for the Vezina Trophy, the award for the best goalie in the NHL. He’s a finalist alongside New York Islanders netminder Ilya Sorokin and Boston Bruins backstop Jeremy Swayman.
The winner of the award will be announced at a later date.
This is the sixth time that Vasilevskiy has been a finalist for the award in his career. Despite the reputation, he’s still searching for his second career Vezina. He took home the award in 2019 and has been the runner-up twice (2021 and 2025).
He’s considered to be a favorite for the award this season, though Sorokin was right on his tail for nearly the entire season. It wouldn’t be too surprising if this were a tight race from a voting perspective.
However, an end-of-regular-season poll by NHL.com had Vasilvskiy as the runaway favorite. He was the leading choice of a 16-writer panel, which gave him 71 voting points, including 14 first-place votes. Sorokin was second with 49 points and two first-place votes.
Vasilevskiy finished the season with 39 wins, the most in the league. It’s the sixth time he’s led the league in a season, and the first time he’s done so since the 2021-22 season. He’s also on a nine-season streak of at least 30 wins.
His .912 save percentage is tied for third in the NHL alongside Logan Thompson and Igor Shesterkin, and his 2.31 goals against average is second to Scott Wedgewood. On the advanced stats side, his 24.7 goals saved above expected was fourth in the NHL and just behind Ilya Sorokin (25.3).
The Lightning are on another strong run of award finalists this season. Nikita Kucherov was named a finalist for the Ted Lindsay Award alongside Connor McDavid and Macklin Celebrini on Tuesday. Some upcoming awards that could see other members of the Lightning be finalists for include the Jack Adams Award (head coach Jon Cooper), the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy (Brayden Point, last season’s runner-up) and the Hart Memorial Trophy (Kucherov, a finalist the previous two seasons).
NHL award finalists are being announced almost daily over the next couple of weeks. The next round of finalists set to be announced will be the Lady Byng on Thursday, April 30.
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