Happy Birthday to The Big Cat, Andrei Vasilevskiy! The Tampa Bay Lightning netminder turned 29 today, which on one hand doesn’t seem that old, but on the other seems like further proof of the inevitable march of time. He’s been in our lives for over a decade now, ever since the Bolts drafted him with the 19th overall pick back in 2012, and a constant in the Lightning net since taking the reigns from Ben Bishop during the 2016-17 season.
Vasilevskiy made his debut a few years before that, stopping 23 of 24 shots from the Philadelphia Flyers in a 3-1 road win on December 16th, 2014 – a game I was lucky enough to attend.