The Tampa Bay Lightning travel to face the Buffalo Sabres tonight in a matchup that highlights two of the NHL’s shakier goaltending performances this season.
Tampa Bay enters the game with an 11-4-2 record, but all four of its losses have come away from home, where the team is just 3-4-2. The Lightning are scoring 3.71 goals per game, one of the better offensive marks in the league, but they’re also allowing 3.06 goals per game despite giving up a modest 24.7 shots per contest. Over their last five games, Tampa Bay has gone 3-2, with one of those losses coming in a shootout.
Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy is expected to start for the Lightning. He’s 8-4-1 on the season with a 2.85 goals-against average, which ranks 24th in the league, and an .883 save percentage, ranking 33rd. Vasilevskiy has started all four of Tampa Bay’s road losses this season.
Buffalo sits at 8-6-3 overall but is just 4-5-0 at home. The Sabres are scoring just under three goals per game while allowing 3.29, and they’ve gone 1-2 in their current home stretch.
Buffalo is likely to start goaltender Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, 27, who is allowing 3.27 goals per game, 38th in the league, with an .878 save percentage, ranking 48th. Luukkonen has performed somewhat better at home this season, allowing 2.88 goals per game in those contests.
Both teams are averaging around three goals per game offensively, though scoring has cooled recently for each. Tampa Bay has gone over 6.5 total goals in three of its last five games, while Buffalo has reached seven or more goals in a game just twice in that span.
