Trophy Tracker: Vasilevskiy overwhelming favorite for Vezina

To mark the end of the 2025-26 regular season, NHL.com is running its fifth and final installment of the Trophy Tracker series this week. Today, we look at the race for the Vezina Trophy, given annually to the top goalie in the NHL as selected NHL general managers.

The Tampa Bay Lightning have used 33 skaters this season, including 12 defensemen. But despite that, one of the few constants has been the play of goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy.

The 31-year-old, now in his 12th NHL season, still is at the top of his game. He leads the League with 39 wins in 58 games, and among goalies to play at least 30 games, his 2.31 goals-against average is second and his .912 save percentage is tied for third. He had a .900 save percentage or better in 35 of his 58 starts (60.3 percent) and his .844 high-danger save percentage was tied for seventh in the NHL.

Those results should lead him to winning the Vezina Trophy as the best goalie in the NHL for the third time. He was the leading choice of a 16-person NHL.com panel, which gave him 71 voting points, including 14 first-place votes. Ilya Sorokin of the New York Islanders was second with 49 points (two first-place votes), followed by Jeremy Swayman of the Boston Bruins with 35 points.

"It's his consistency," TNT analyst and former NHL goalie Brian Boucher said. "I think it's every year, you know what you're going to get. I know he's had a few injury concerns with the back, but by and large, he's durable. He's consistent in his play; every night it's a game that is close to an 'A' game. To me, it's so hard in today's game to find goaltenders that are durable and can give you those consistent efforts night after night. He's the model of it."

And Vasilevskiy has done it despite a revolving cast of players in front of him. Among their projected top four defensemen when the season began, the only one to play more than 65 games has been J.J. Moser (79). Erik Cernak (61), Ryan McDonagh (48) and Victor Hedman (33) all have missed significant time this season.

But despite that, the Lightning (50-26-6) finished second in the Atlantic Division and will enter the Stanley Cup Playoffs as one of the favorites to reach the Cup Final.

"I think what he does is he makes other players look good," Boucher said. "The Lightning can call up players and they can plug and play, and a lot of it is because they've got a lot of trust in the guy who's in goal. Don't discredit that. With the injuries that they've had this year, what he's able to do to steady and calm the waters, that allows other guys to do their job."

Vasilevskiy's best run of the season came from Dec. 20-Feb. 25, when he went 17-0-1 with a 1.90 GAA and .925 save percentage in 18 games. During that span, Tampa Bay went 20-1-1 to go from third in the division, two points behind the first-place Red Wings, to an eight-point lead in the division. The last goalie with a point streak longer was Vasilevskiy, who had a 21-game run in 2019-20.

And he's maintained that high level down the stretch, going 9-3-1 with a 2.32 GAA and .905 save percentage in 13 games since March 15.

"He's still very agile, very powerful," Boucher said. "He's imposing in the net, too. Just because of his size (6-foot-4, 223 pounds), he takes up so much net, I think he's intimidating to a lot of shooters. I think he gets in the heads of a lot of teams. They know that when he gets going that he's tough to beat, and he's got the big-game experience. 

"He was fortunate. He was able to get a rest during the Olympic break when other people were playing. He was able to get some rest. And who knows what that'll do for him here, come playoff time."

Vasilevskiy is a two-time Stanley Cup winner (2020, 2021) and has been to the Cup Final two other times (2015, 2022). He also was voted the Vezina winner in 2018-19. Winning it again would make him the third non-North America born goalie to win it multiple times, joining Sergei Bobrovsky (two) and Dominik Hasek (six).

"There's a lot of teams that would that would die to have a goaltender like that in their organization for 12 to 15 years," Boucher said. "The Lightning are very lucky."

Voting totals (points awarded on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis): Andrei Vasilevskiy, Lightning, 75 points (14 first-place votes); Ilya Sorokin, Islanders 49 (2); Jeremy Swayman, Bruins, 35; Scott Wedgewood, Colorado Avalanche, 33; Logan Thompson, Washington Capitals, 21; Jake Oettinger, Dallas Stars, 13; Igor Shesterkin, New York Rangers, 10; Brandon Bussi, Carolina Hurricanes, 3; Filip Gustavsson, Minnesota Wild, 1