Kucherov Ties Stamkos for the Lightning Points Record at 1,137

Nikita Kucherov tied Steven Stamkos for the Tampa Bay Lightning points record on Tuesday night in Las Vegas, reaching 1,137 career points with a goal and two assists in a 6-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights. The tying point was his own goal, a breakaway at 5:16 of the third period. He reached the total in 888 games; Stamkos needed 1,082, and that 194-game gap is the real story of the record.

How did Kucherov reach 1,137 points on Tuesday?

He built the night in layers, and the NHL’s game recap records each one. Kucherov assisted on Brandon Hagel’s power-play goal at 4:11 of the first period. In the second, he chased down a rebound below the goal line and set up Anthony Cirelli in front, a goal that put Tampa Bay ahead 3-2. The record point came on his own stick in the third: he poked the puck away from Vegas defenseman Jeremy Lauzon at the Tampa Bay blue line, skated in alone and beat Carter Hart on the blocker side, as Daily Faceoff’s account of the milestone describes the play. Three points on the night took him from 1,134 to 1,137, exactly where Stamkos has sat since leaving for Nashville. AP notes, via theScore, that Kucherov has now scored in all 15 games he has played against Vegas.

His teammates framed the pace rather than the total. “His work ethic, his dedication to the game, and his dedication to the bench has always been there,” Victor Hedman said in the NHL recap. Coach Jon Cooper put it shorter: “That’s what he does. He’s a special talent. Guys like him don’t come around. He’s given our fans a decade of awesome.”

How do Kucherov’s and Stamkos’s totals compare?

The totals match; the shape of them does not. The NHL’s recap gives Kucherov 1,137 points from 405 goals and 732 assists in 888 games. Stamkos collected his 1,137 from 555 goals and 582 assists in 1,082 games. Stamkos scored 150 more goals. Kucherov has registered 150 more assists. And Kucherov reached the same total in 194 fewer games, roughly a season and a half of hockey. One man was the finisher Tampa Bay built its power play around for sixteen years. The other is a winger who creates more than he converts, producing points at a rate the franchise has never had before. Franchise-record pages tend to flatten two different careers into one number; the recent anatomy of Cole Caufield’s overtime-goals record for Montreal is this site’s version of the same argument, and the interest sits in how each player got there.

Who sits below them on the Lightning list?

Nobody else is close. Daily Faceoff lists the rest of the franchise top five as Martin St. Louis with 953 points, Vincent Lecavalier with 874 and current defenseman Victor Hedman with 814. Hedman scored Tampa Bay’s fifth goal on Tuesday, so the only active player on the list was on the ice when the record was tied, 323 points behind Kucherov. The gap between second and third place is 184 points. Kucherov and Stamkos have turned the top of this list into a two-man argument, and the argument ends the next time Kucherov registers a point.

How did the game itself play out?

Twice Vegas pulled level in the first period, through Ivan Barbashev and a short-handed goal from Mark Stone, and twice Tampa Bay answered within a minute, through Hagel and John Carlson. The second period decided it. Cirelli scored at 6:44 and again at 10:09, the second of them the 150th goal of his career, and Hedman made it 5-2 before the period ended. Kucherov’s breakaway was the only goal of the third. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 32 saves, Hart made 15, and the win was Tampa Bay’s third in a row in the first game of a three-game trip. Early-season form lines are forming across the league, from Connor Bedard’s return as Pittsburgh’s captain to the Fantilli and Marchenko reunion game in Columbus.

Why did Cirelli miss the third period?

That is the one loose end from Tuesday, and it is worth stating plainly: nobody has explained it yet. Cirelli scored twice in the second period, his last shift ended with 1:09 remaining in that period, and he did not take a shift in the third. The NHL’s recap notes that Cooper provided no update after the game. No report checked for this article describes an injury, a collision or a coach’s decision, so his status for Friday stays an open question here. This desk handles an unexplained absence the same way it handled the Ben Kindel medical episode on the Penguins’ flight: report the club’s wording, and add nothing to it.

When can Kucherov break the record?

Friday, October 23, in Colorado, if he records a single point. Daily Faceoff identifies the Avalanche game as his first chance, and on current form a longer wait would be a surprise. Kucherov has 4 goals and 9 assists in nine games this season, a team-high 13 points, a year after winning the Hart Trophy with 130 points. He was a second-round draft pick in 2011, scored 18 points in 52 games as a rookie in 2013-14, and has since won two Stanley Cups, two Hart Trophies and three Art Ross Trophies in Tampa Bay colours. Stamkos built his total over sixteen seasons and now plays for Nashville, so the record he still shares is out of his hands. One point in Colorado settles it, on a trip that then takes Tampa Bay to Utah. For a different kind of deadline in the same league, the Connor Hellebuyck holdout timeline tracks a Friday of its own in Winnipeg.