In Detroit, the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning scored once in each period, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 45 saves in a 3-0 shutout of the Red Wings on Saturday. 
“Andrei is an outstanding goalie in this league, so we’ve seen him play great games on a number of occasions,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “Probably not to this extent, just because we don’t usually play this poorly.”
It was his 30th career NHL shutout.
“I’d rather play in a game like this where my defense is playing great and blocking shots, than a game where I face 15 shots and three of them are 2-on-1s and five are breakaways,” Vasilevskiy said. “I didn’t have time to think tonight. When I only face 15 shots, I probably think too much.”
Tampa Bay improved to Tampa Bay 37-17-4.
Brayden Point scored in the first period to give the Lightning a 1-0 advantage, and all the offense they would need.
“I’ve been with this organization for a long time, about a decade, and we’ve lost a lot of games where we were the better team,” Cooper said. “We haven’t won as many when we weren’t the better team, but that’s what happened tonight.”
Detroit dropped to 28-22-8.
“As a team, they dig coming off poor losses, but no one digs in like [Vasilevskiy] off a poor performance,” said Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde, who spent the past four seasons as an assistant coach in Tampa Bay. “Obviously it feels like we deserved a better fate, but he was just remarkable.”
Nikita Kucherov‘s goal in the middle frame extended the lead for the Bolts to 2-0.
“That was a huge moment for our confidence,” Tampa’s Victor Hedman said. “We got ourselves into a mess in our end, but [Vasilevskiy] got us out of it, and then we go down and get one with seven seconds left.
“That’s a big moment.”
Alex Killorn hit an empty net at 17:45 for the 3-0 final.
Ville Husso made 15 saves in the loss, the game was his 100th career NHL match.
“He’s a world-class goalie and, as the other team, you never want to see him get hot like that and pucks are hitting him,” Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin said. “We’re trying to not get too low here. We played one of our best games at 5-on-5 in a long time. You could just tell that [Vasilevskiy] was going to be the difference tonight.”
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