Perhaps surprisingly, Vasilevskiy doesn't point to how much younger, more dynamic and better shooters have developed. Instead, he refers to how many fewer easy shots goalies face now.
"I feel that players don't waste shots anymore," Vasilevskiy says.
"When I came into the league (in 2014-15), it used to be 30 or 35 plus shots every game. It was almost every night you felt good about your performance because you were in the game all the time. Today, players don't waste shots. It's about quality. They're all looking for the perfect game situation, the perfect pass, and the perfect shot."
The save percentage has declined gradually each year since peaking in 2014-15 and 2015-16 at 0.915, reaching an 18-year low of 0.903 last season.
It's the lowest since it hit .901 in 2005-06, which came after the cancelled 2004-05 season resulted in smaller goalie equipment and new rules to reduce defensive interference, and the ongoing decline in save percentage could end up taking it below .900 for the first time since 1995-96.
Most of the attention surrounding the drop in save percentage has been focused on the influx of young shooters.
Players and teams are using analytics to determine which types of scoring chances are most likely to succeed.
And with a greater understanding of how they best score, there seems to be an increased quality of shots being fired, many of which come after lateral shifts with quick passes or puck movement across the centre of the ice that force goalies to rotate completely from one side to the other.