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The Buzzer: Kucherov and Kane ride again

kucherovkane

Three Stars

1. Nikita Kucherov

Kucherov helped the Lightning pass the 90-point standings barrier (before any other team has hit 80), while passing the 90-point mark himself. With an impressive one goal and three assists, Kucherov now has a ridiculous 92 points in just 58 points.

PHT’s covered the “Kucherov is awesome” thing quite well recently, from his fantastic performance on Thursday to his wider dominance from a historical perspective.

It’s probably not shocking, what with the Lightning winning 6-0 against Dallas, that the Bolts generated other quality top three considerations. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 32 saves to pitch a shutout, already his fifth of the season. He has an outside chance of tying or exceeding his career high of eight from last season.

Steven Stamkos deserves another honorable mention, scoring two goals and one assist, with one of his tallies being the GWG, and Stamkos also fired six shots on goal. Yeah, it was a good night for quite a few Lightning players.

Kucherov stands above the rest with four points, but he also has two straight four-point nights, and had a three point-game before that, so that’s 11 points in his last three contests. Wow.

2. Auston Matthews

Speaking of players who’ve already received attention, Matthews crossed the 100-goal barrier on Thursday, which you can read about on a broader level in this post.

Matthews is now at 101 goals, actually, as he scored two goals and one assist in Toronto’s win against the Vegas Golden Knights. Matthews fired six SOG in this one, so he was quite active in that victory.

In 43 games this season, Matthews has 27 goals and 26 assists for 53 points.

3. Patrick Kane

With a goal and two assists, Kane didn’t just barely extend his 16-game point streak, he truly powered another Blackhawks win.

But, seriously, that 16-game point streak.

By generating an assist, Kane has had a helper in 15 consecutive games, breaking a tie with Stan Mikita for the Blackhawks’ franchise record. He’s the seventh player with an assist streak of 15 games or more in NHL history.

This marks Kane’s fifth 50+ assist season, putting him on a list of the best passing wingers of all-time. Yeah, there are a lot of ways to carve up the great play of runs like that of Kane and Kucherov.

Highlights of the Night

After this fake-out by Stamkos, Andrew Cogliano might prefer being traded to anonymity.

What a rifle of a shot by Elias Pettersson.

Ilya Kovalchuk does his Brooks Orpik impression.

If you need a smile, and this doesn’t bring that to your face ... I just don’t know how to help you.

More Factoids


  • Some significant team streak news, too. The St. Louis Blues won again, stretching their winning streak to eight games. They hold a game in hand over Dallas, so the Blues are now ranked third in the Central. On the other end of the positive streak spectrum, the Avalanche finally won, ending a grueling eight-game skid.
  • Not all streak news was positive. The Sharks fell to the Capitals, so they’re run ended at six wins in a row.
  • Moving to players, T.J. Oshie collected his 500th point, while Chris Kunitz played in his 1,000th game.

Scores

FLA 3 - CGY 2 (SO)
NYI 3 - CBJ 0
DET 3 - OTT 2
TBL 6 - DAL 0
NSH 3 - MTL 1
COL 4 - WPG 1
CHI 5 - NJD 2
STL 4 - ARI 0
TOR 6 - VGK 3
VAN 4 - LAK 3 (SO)
WSH 5 - SJS 1

James O’Brien is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @cyclelikesedins.