"It's up to him and how he feels, and we'll talk about that today," Cooper said.
Vasilevskiy's last appearance came over a month ago on November 10 in a 6-4 loss to Ottawa. Conditioning will be the main factor whether or not Vasilevskiy plays against the Maple Leafs.
"One of the big things is, it's not as much the injury as it is the cardio and how he's feeling in that respect," Cooper said. "So, we'll sit down with him in a little bit here and see how he feels. But he looked good out there."
Vasilevskiy faced a bevy of shots from his teammates during Wednesday's practice. He moved side to side in the crease as smoothly as he always has, the 24 year old showing no signs of struggle or discomfort as he pushed off his left skate to slide over to his right. And he took part in special teams drills, five-on-five work and even some mini-game action over the course of the roughly hour-long practice.
"The one thing is the competition of the players is much different, and then you put him in game-like situations, which we tried to do today with just a wide array of special teams, 5-on-5," Cooper said. "You build practices around your players, but you can build practices around your goaltending. We wanted to make sure that he got a sweat today and to see how he went through it. Looks like he managed it pretty well."
Vasilevskiy has missed 14 games, the Lightning going 12-2-0 in his absence. With him out, the Bolts have turned to Louis Domingue - and Eddie Pasquale for one game - to keep them afloat, Domingue starting a NHL-most 11-straight games from November 13 to December 3 and winning nine of his last 10 starts.
Domingue ranks third in the NHL for wins currently with 14, and his 11 wins since November third are the most in the league over that span.
"It's a team sport and the reason you've got guys waiting in line to play is in case injuries happen," Cooper said. "Louis came in last year and we saw that we had somebody that was extremely capable of playing, won us some huge games down the stretch last year. You don't want anybody to get hurt by any means, but if you're going to lose your starting goaltending for a month or so, somebody's got to fill that void and step in and Louis did an unreal job. But aside from that, our team play picked up. We defended better. Naturally, we got on some streaks where we scored a bunch of goals, but everybody's game kind of rounded into shape and it's kind of why we are where we are right now."
When Vasilevskiy was injured, the Lightning were in first place in the Eastern Conference by a point over Toronto and trailed Nashville by two points overall in the standings. Now, with Vasilevskiy nearing a return, the Bolts sit atop the league standings by six points over the Maple Leafs. They enter Thursday's game riding a seven-game win streak, the third longest in franchise history, a remarkable run considering the Lightning did it all without their All-Star and Vezina-caliber goaltender.
