Nikita Kucherov scored his 1,000th point over the weekend in arguably the most typical Nikita Kucherov way possible: by engineering a Lightning goal with a perfect cross-ice assist to give Tampa Bay the lead.
He became the 101st player in NHL history to reach the mark and the second to do so in a Lightning uniform, joining former teammate and power play associate Steven Stamkos.
On Thursday, the Lightning will host a pregame ceremony celebrating those 1,000 points and Kucherov’s already illustrious career.
He’s played in 152 playoff games, four Stanley Cup Finals—won two of them—and racked up more career assists than anyone in Bolts history. He is a devout Art Ross Trophy collector, a two-time Ted Lindsay Award-winner and a grandmaster of the game night-in and night-out.
We could zoom in on Kucherov’s booming prime for many words and still have time to watch them talk about it on TNT. But some of my favorite Kucherov points—and I’d wager many Bolts fans would say the same—reside within the first 100 of his career.
Kucherov famously scored a goal on his very first NHL shift after being called up on November 28, 2013. He then broke out in his first full NHL season in 2014-2015, arriving on the scene with 29 goals and 65 points at just 21 years old. But there’s an important distinction between the moment Kucherov arrived on the NHL scene and the moment he kicked its door down and made himself at home.
During Tampa Bay’s 2015 Stanley Cup Final run, Kucherov grew out a beard and dropped 22 points in 26 games as a member of the beloved “Triplets” line alongside Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat. Kuch scored two game-winning goals in overtime during the run—one against Montreal in Round 2 and a laser against New York in the Eastern Conference Final. His signature smooth play was now on national networks, his name now on the marquee of hockey media.
I remember watching those playoff games at various bars around my apartment at the time in New York City. Game after game, a small group of Tampa expats would pile into whichever sports bar had the most Lightning hockey and the least number of Rangers fans. And game after game, we all left with the same resounding sentiment: “This Nikita Kucherov guy could be pretty good.”
More than 900 points later, if you were to hear someone mutter the phrase, “This Nikita Kucherov guy could be pretty good,” you might sit them down for a quick tutorial or have them checked out at a local treatment center. Now you’re more likely to hear people like P.K. Subban campaigning for Kucherov’s MVP case. Or future hall of famers like Nathan MacKinnon and Sidney Crosby explaining why he’s their favorite player to watch.
So as the Lightning commemorate one of the most impressive resumes of the NHL’s modern era, we decided to look back at the stats that put it all into perspective.
