While it’s not wise to panic about any team this early in the season, it’d be fair to worry about the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The absence of Andrei Vasilevskiy is clearly dragging the club down as its in-house goaltending options have not impressed in the first three games of the season.
That was more or less to be expected when the team was unable to find help outside the organization prior to the season opener. The cap-strapped Lightning had little choice but to ride with Johansson — who brought a career save percentage of .886 into 2023-24 — and Tompkins, a 29-year-old who’d never logged a minute at the NHL level.
It’d be difficult to be too surprised by what the pair has shown early on. Tampa Bay is using two replacement-level goaltenders, and the team has gotten replacement-level goaltending.
This duo seems likely to make life harder on the Lightning in the early going, but it’s not a totally unworkable situation. For instance, the Seattle Kraken had a 100-point season in 2022-23 in spite of a goaltending group that combined for a .890 save percentage.
If the Lightning play well enough in front of their suspect goalies, they can weather this storm. So far they haven’t shown any indication that’s what they’re going to do.
Tampa Bay has played three games in 2023-24 against teams that didn’t make the playoffs last season — the Nashville Predators, Detroit Red Wings and Ottawa Senators — and have one win to show for it.
It would be bad enough for the Lightning if they could chalk their lack of success up to their goaltenders, but that wouldn’t be a fair way to characterize their start. Despite their less-than-intimidating early schedule, Tampa Bay has been thoroughly outplayed in the early going.
The Lightning have conceded 37 shots on net per game while managing 27.3 — and that’s not warped by an inordinate amount of penalty killing. This team has been one of the worst 5v5 groups in the NHL according to major possession metrics.
While we’re dealing with a small sample, getting thoroughly outplayed by teams that are not exactly powerhouses isn’t a great look. The team’s goaltenders have a cumulative GSAA of -1.8, but even if we take two goals off the Lightning’s ledger, they’d still be allowing four per game.
It’s possible that Johansson and Tompkins play better in the weeks to come. They probably will, but their ceilings don’t seem particularly high, and their floors could even be a touch lower than what we’ve seen so far.
Getting Vasilevskiy back projects to change the Lightning’s fortunes in a significant way, but that’s weeks away — and if they keep playing like they have lately, things might be looking grim by then.
There is plenty of time for Tampa Bay to find its legs, and any goalie is capable of getting hot — even ones without much of an NHL track record. The Lightning are not doomed by any stretch of the imagination.
But when injuries force unknown quantities into the crease, it often takes a whole team stepping up to compensate. It has to be concerning for the Lightning that in the first week of the season, the opposite has happened.
On paper, the Lightning look like a team with enough roster talent to survive digging a few ugly goals out of their own net. In practice, they’ve been extremely unimpressive in their first couple of games, suspect goaltending or not.
