Andrei Vasilevskiy shines as Lightning blank Mammoth
Andrei Vasilevskiy turned away 28 shots, Darren Raddysh and Brandon Hagel tallied on the power play and the Tampa Bay Lightning won their sixth straight home game by stuffing the Utah Mammoth 2-0 on Monday night.
In his 42nd career shutout, Vasilevskiy stopped eight shots in the third period for his second blanking this season. His 20-save showing against the Philadelphia Flyers in a 3-0 win on Nov. 24 was his other.
Tampa Bay improved to 15-1-1 in its past 17 games.
Utah goaltender Karel Vejmelka made 25 saves, and Dylan Guenther skated in his 200th NHL game. Winger Lawson Crouse (illness) returned to Utah's lineup following a one-game absence.
Both clubs entered the matchup with a January mark of 9-1-1 -- the two hottest teams in the NHL -- but offense was impossible to find in the first period.
Playing the second of a four-game road trip, Utah outshot the Lightning 12-11 and had the best scoring chance with 22 seconds left when Guenther rang a wrister off the crossbar.
Opening a five-game homestand before the Olympic break, the Lightning looked like a team that had been on the road for seven of the past eight contests and squandered a late chance when ex-Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev went off for slashing Nikita Kucherov at 17:16.
Utah put forth the better play in the second, posting eight of the nine shots on goal in the first 11 minutes. However, Vasilevskiy starred with strong stops, including a point-blank chance by Michael Carcone on a 2-on-1 rush at 11:06.
The Mammoth ran into penalty trouble later. The Lightning capitalized on their third power play when Kucherov fed Raddysh for a 92-mph blast for his eighth man-advantage goal, the most by any NHL defenseman.
In the third, Vasilevskiy continued to frustrate Utah by denying Clayton Keller on a breakaway backhander at 10:15, and Hagel's tally with 46 seconds left gave the Lightning a sweep of the two-game season series over the Western Conference club.