Nikita Kucherov accelerated to 90

In excellent form, Russian Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov was the first to reach the 90-point mark in the current NHL regular season, scoring a goal in a match in which his club beat the Boston Bruins 3:2 in a shootout. ” Kucherov leads the championship scoring race. True, his lead over his pursuer, Nathan MacKinnon from the Colorado Avalanche, is only three points.

Strictly speaking, the hero of the match in which Tampa, whose tournament position cannot yet be called reinforced concrete, since it is located near the border of the play-off zone, won a valuable victory over the leader of its Atlantic division, was another Russian hockey player. It was about him, the Big Cat, as goalkeeper Andrei Vasilevsky is called in America, that coach John Cooper mainly talked about after the end of the meeting. Vasilevsky really pulled Tampa out. In this match he stopped 36 shots, including several very difficult ones. In overtime, he got out of a dangerous situation: Boston captain Brad Marchand, playing his thousandth game in the league, really wanted to score and had the opportunity to shoot for the kill, but Vasilevsky reacted. Finally, in the shootout, he handled all three Boston players who had to take them – Jake DeBrusk, Charlie Coyle and David Pastrnak, while Tampa, thanks to Brayden Point, shot one past Boston goalkeeper Linus Ullmark. Overall, a great match.

But it was, of course, impossible to ignore Nikita Kucherov’s speech for obvious reasons. In the second period of the match, Kucherov, accurately shooting at goal from an acute angle during the power play, made the score 2:0. And with this goal, his 34th in the championship, he scored his 90th point.

Ninety is, of course, not such a beautiful number as a hundred. But timing was important here, providing Nikita Kucherov with a rather remarkable achievement.

In order to reach the milestone, the Russian striker, who seems to have reached a career peak this season even higher than in 2019, when he took awards for both the league’s best scorer and simply the best player, needed to play in 53 matches. And this is a very short distance. The NHL immediately cited eloquent statistics. In the past three decades, only five hockey players managed to reach 90 points in less than 55 matches. And all these are names that people who know hockey tend to pronounce with aspiration – Wayne Gretzky, Jaromir Jagr, Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid. Cool company, such a sign of quality. And a new triumph in the scorer race, towards which Kucherov is moving, will give him shine.

True, everything is not so simple.

Still close to the Russian is Colorado center forward Nathan MacKinnon, who is also playing with inspiration and productivity in the current championship.

On the same day that Tampa played Boston, his club played the Washington Capitals. After this meeting, highlighting personal feats, they paid attention mainly to Alexander Ovechkin’s goal. The thing is that Ovechkin, who suffered for half of the championship in search of sniper luck and, it seemed, was about to give up his dreams of succeeding in pursuit of Gretzky’s record for the number of goals scored in the regular championship, extended his streak of matches in which he hit someone else’s goal, right up to six. And, by the way, he hasn’t had such a long series since 2018.

But the thing is that Alexander Ovechkin’s goal was still a somewhat local event, or something. Colorado defeated struggling Washington 6:3, and MacKinnon recorded two assists. After them, he is only three points behind Kucherov.

The rest of the pursuers are already quite far away. Ten points behind MacKinnon are David Pastrnak and Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid. However, in the case of McDavid, “far” is a relative concept. The forward, who scored a record 153 points for this century in the previous season, remained relatively modest for some time this season and missed several matches due to injury. But when in good shape, he is capable of scoring miracles. McDavid demonstrated one of them in the match against the Detroit Red Wings. Edmonton won 8:4, and its leader assisted in six scoring combinations. Moreover, often his actions were much more significant for scoring goals than the actions of the hockey player who last touched the puck. So, it is quite possible that in the person of McDavid, Kucherov has a “shadow” competitor, who threatens to turn into an absolutely real one under a successful set of circumstances.

Alexey Dospehov