from Chris Johnston of Sportsnet,
This was Nikita Kucherov’s 13th game of the entire season.
Roughly a month’s worth of action coming off no training camp, no exhibition play and not much of anything besides tedious rehabilitation from the time he had a labral tear in his right hip surgically repaired on Dec. 29 until the start of these Stanley Cup Playoffs.
And yet here in a hotly-contested, high-stakes game the Tampa Bay Lightning absolutely needed to win, there wasn’t much debate about why they did.
“Some unreal plays by No. 86,” remarked Victor Hedman of Kucherov’s three-assist performance in Tuesday’s 4-2 victory over the New York Islanders.
Put aside for a moment the discussion about the salary cap maneuvering that accompanied Kucherov’s injury — we’ll get to that below — and consider the human achievement we’re witnessing here.
Kucherov is lapping the field with 22 points in these playoffs and it’s still the early stages of the third round. That’s traditionally been a respectable total for an entire spring — Ryan O’Reilly won the Conn Smythe Trophy two years ago after scoring 23 points for the St. Louis Blues — and never before has the leading scorer in the post-season missed the entire regular season directly preceding it.
Below, catch the game highlights.
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