'Wednesday Night Hockey': 5 Storylines

How good are the Tampa Bay Lightning? The best team in the NHL (48-11-4) will get a chance to show why it was the first to 100 points this season when it faces the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden in the first half of a "Wednesday Night Hockey" doubleheader (7:30 p.m. ET; NBCSN). The Rangers (27-26-9) will look a lot different from the team that lost its first two games against Tampa Bay after trading forwards Kevin Hayes and Mats Zuccarello, as well as defenseman Adam McQuaid, prior to the NHL Trade Deadline.

The second game matches two teams that need to get on a roll to keep their hopes of qualifying for the Stanley Cup Playoffs alive. The Chicago Blackhawks (26-28-9) begin a three-game swing through California when they play the Anaheim Ducks (24-30-9) at Honda Center (10 p.m. ET; NBCSN, NBCSCH+).
Here are 5 storylines to watch:

Historic season for Lightning?

Tampa Bay has left no doubt that it's the best team in the NHL so far this season. The Lightning became the fourth team in NHL history and the first since the 1977-78 Montreal Canadiens to reach 100 points in 63 games or fewer. A victory in New York will give them a 10-game winning streak, which would be their longest since entering the NHL in 1992. The Lightning are 11-0-2 since losing 4-2 at the Pittsburgh Penguins on Jan. 30, their second point streak of at least 13 games this season. They're on pace to finish with 130 points, the most in a season since the 1995-96 Detroit Red Wings had 131, all but assured of winning the Presidents' Trophy as the regular-season champion and have to be considered the favorite to win the Stanley Cup for the first time since 2004.

Kucherov leads the offense

The Lightning lead the NHL in scoring with 242 goals (and they're 6-1 in shootouts). They are the only team with three players in the top 10 in scoring, but forward Nikita Kucherov has been their cornerstone. Kucherov (101 points; 30 goals, 71 assists) has an eight-point lead on Chicago's Patrick Kane in the race for the Art Ross Trophy. He was the first player in the NHL to reach 100 points this season and the first in Lightning history to have multiple 100-point seasons. Kucherov has stepped up his game in the past couple of weeks. He has 20 points (eight goals, 12 assists) in his past eight games and is on pace for 131 points, which would be the most since Mario Lemieux (161) and Jaromir Jagr (149) of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1995-96.

New-look Rangers

For the second straight season, the Rangers did some major selling ahead of the trade deadline. Hayes and Zuccarello were two of their top-six forwards, and McQuaid provided physicality on the ice along with experience in the locker room. The challenge for first-year coach David Quinn is evaluating the players he has left and the ones who are sure to be called up from the Rangers' American Hockey League affiliate in Hartford to determine which ones he and general manager Jeff Gorton want to move forward with. Playing a team like Tampa Bay will be a good test.

Blackhawks: All offense, no defense

Chicago has turned into one of the most dangerous offensive teams in the NHL since the calendar flipped to 2019. Kane is second in scoring with 93 points (39 goals, 54 assists) and had a 20-game point streak end Sunday. Center Jonathan Toews (64 points; 29 goals, 35 assists), on his way to his best offensive season since 2010-11, and second-year forward Alex DeBrincat (62 points; 34 goals, 28 assists) lead an offense that has scored 210 goals in 63 games. The Blackhawks' problem has been keeping the puck out of their own net. They've allowed an NHL worst 235 goals, including 25 in their past five games. The return of goalie Corey Crawford, who's been out since Dec. 16, should help, but so would some more help from his teammates.

Ducks struggling to score

In contrast to the Blackhawks, Anaheim has struggled to score for most of the season. The Ducks are last in the NHL in scoring with 136 goals and they're coming off a Western Canada swing that saw them go 0-3-0 and score two goals in the three games. Anaheim is 3-11-0 in its past 14 and has scored more than three goals twice during that span. No one on the Ducks has more than 16 goals (Jakob Silfverberg) or 39 points (Ryan Getzlaf, who has missed three games with an upper-body injury), but if there's one team that the Ducks should be able to score against, it figures to be the Blackhawks.