Tampa Bay Lightning fans may end up torn over who is selected to go to the All-Star game.
The Tampa Bay Lightning aren't having the most successful season of recent memory. They are one point outside of a Wild Card position in the Eastern Conference, behind the Philadelphia Flyers, New Jersey Devils and the Washington Capitals. All three of those teams have games in hand on the Lightning - and sport better winning percentages.
Because anything can happen in the playoffs just making it is often enough. The playoffs are a new beast entirely - where the regular season doesn't matter anymore.
The All-Star game this year will have one representative selected from each of the 32 teams, with the last 12 players voted in by the fans. In my mind there are two clear choices. Both have equal merit, even if one is more likely than the other.
Andrei Vasilevskiy
Often fans and media alike look to goals against average (GAA) and save percentage (SV%) to determine a goalies worth. While that can be useful, it only tells part of the story when it comes to goalies, especially with Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Vasilevskiy began the year injured. He had a lumbar disc herniation in late September, which resulted in Jonas Johansson taking over starting goalie duties to begin the regular season. Vasilevskiy has played in 16 games since he returned at the end of November.
As far as his numbers are concerned, he has a 2.94 GAA and a .900 SV%. Those numbers aren't awful, but they are below what we have come to expect from the Russian goaltender. His career averages for both are 2.54 GAA and .918 SV%.
For this year it is worth looking at another metric for Vasilevskiy - goals saved above expected. Vasilevskiy's goals saved above expected is 4.2. What that means is that given the quality, location and type (among many other factors) of shots Vasilevskiy has saved 4.2 more goals than he should have. He is ranked 17th in the NHL in this stat, according to MoneyPuck, among all goalies who have played at least 15 games.
Ten of the goalies ranked higher than him in goals saved above expected have played over 22 games. That's pretty impressive for a goalie coming back from surgery.
Nikita Kucherov
Nikita Kucherov feels like a shoe-in for the All-Star game this year. He is the league's leading scorer, with 63 points in 38 games. Nathan MacKinnon is two points behind him while Connor McDavid is 10 points back.
Kucherov has a phenomenal shot, but he has an underrated passing game. According to Meghan Chayka of Stathletes, Kucherov has a knack for setting up scoring chances. His 2.76 scoring chance assists per game are second in the NHL only to the aforementioned McDavid.
When it comes to the NHL All-Star Game, Kucherov is the obvious representative to this writer. We wait for the official selections.
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