Matt Tomkins likely to start for Lightning on Thursday in Montreal

TORONTO — Goaltender Matt Tomkins, who was added to the Lightning’s roster Tuesday as an emergency recall, is expected to start Thursday’s game in Montreal.

Starter Andrei Vasilevskiy is in net tonight in Toronto and backup goaltender Jonas Johansson is out with a lower-body injury, prompting the team to summon the 29-year-old rookie from AHL Syracuse.

Tomkins was on the ice at Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday morning for the Lightning’s skate.

The Lightning signed Tomkins, a career journeyman who spent the previous two seasons playing professionally in Sweden and played for Team Canada in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, to a two-year, two-way contract in the offseason to be the main goaltender at Syracuse. But when Vasilevskiy was sidelined to open the season recovering from back surgery, Tomkins — who had never previously played in the NHL — was thrust into the Lightning’s backup goaltender role.

He made three starts before going to Syracuse when Vasilevskiy returned right after Thanksgiving, but not before earning his first NHL win in Montreal on Nov. 7, stopping 23 of 26 shots in a 5-3 win over the Canadiens.

Coincidentally, his next NHL start will likely be at the Bell Centre again.

“A lot of great feelings last time I was in that building,” Tomkins said. “So it will be fun to have the chance to play there again, of course to have the chance to play anywhere, it’s really exciting…We’ll see what happens but one day at a time for now. Fingers crossed, it’d be a blast.”

The Lightning had to activate an emergency recall exemption to add Tomkins back to the NHL roster. To activate the exemption, a team has to have less than $100,000 of salary cap space and play at least one game shorthanded.

They qualified for the latter by having to dress their emergency backup goaltender (also known as the EBUG), Kyle Konin, for Monday’s 4-2 loss to Detroit at Amalie Arena. An emergency recall doesn’t count against the cap; any player joining a roster on emergency recall can’t have a salary over $875,500. Tomkins has a $775,000 NHL cap-hit salary.

Tomkins has played well in Syracuse, posting a 15-12-2 record with the Crunch, as well as a .904 save percentage and 2.53 games-against average. He has allowed two or fewer goals in 12 of his last 16 games.

“I’ve had a lot of time to really work on a lot of different parts of my game that you kind of maybe lose throughout the season,” Tomkins said Wednesday. “The schedule here at the start of the year is much more hectic than it is in the American League. So less time to do a lot of those fine-tuning things. So it’s been a great opportunity to just play a lot, work on things and then execute them in the games.”

NOTE: The Lightning’s April 17 regular-season finale against the Maple Leafs at home has been changed to a national TV broadcast to be shown exclusively on TNT. It was previously a Bally Sports Sun game.

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