{"id":139946,"date":"2026-02-01T20:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T20:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/139946\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T20:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T20:39:12","slug":"nikita-kucherov-named-nhls-1st-star-of-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/139946\/","title":{"rendered":"Nikita Kucherov named NHL&#8217;s 1st Star of January"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FIRST STAR \u2013 NIKITA KUCHEROV, RW, TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING<br \/>Kucherov, who will play host to Pastrnak and the Bruins in tonight\u2019s 2026 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series (6:30 p.m. ET, ESPN, SN, TVAS), paced the League with 22 assists and 31 points in 13 games (9-22\u201431) to lift the Lightning (34-14-4, 72 points) into first place in the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference on the strength of an 11-1-1 January (23 points) \u2013 Tampa Bay\u2019s fourth-highest point total in any calendar month behind December 2018 (13-0-1, 27 points), February 2019 (12\u20111-2, 26 points) and January 2004 (11-3-2, 24 points). January marked Kucherov\u2019s third career 30-point month, after April 2022 (14-17\u201431 in 16 GP) and December 2018 (9-21\u201430 in 14 GP), making him the eighth player in NHL history to achieve the feat at least three times. He found the scoresheet in 12 of his 13 appearances, highlighted by a League-best 10 multi-point performances including: his eighth career five-point effort (Jan. 3 at SJS: 1\u20114\u20145), two four-point outings (Jan. 10 at PHI: 2-2\u20144 and Jan. 24 at CBJ: 1-3\u20144) and a pair of three-point games (Jan. 1 at LAK: 1-2\u20143 and Jan. 20 vs. SJS: 0-3\u20143). The 32-year-old Kucherov additionally ranked among the top January performers in even-strength points (1st; 20), power-play assists (1st; 9), power-play points (1st; 11), even-strength assists (2nd; 13), plus\/minus (t\u20115th; +14), even-strength goals (t-9th; 7) and goals (t-13th; 9). The two-time reigning Art Ross Trophy winner sits third in the League with 27-55\u201482 overall this season (48 GP), also placing among the leading NHLers in points per game (2nd; 1.71), assists (2nd; 55), even-strength assists (2nd; 36), even-strength points (2nd; 57) and multi-point performances (t-2nd; 29).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIRST STAR \u2013 NIKITA KUCHEROV, RW, TAMPA BAY LIGHTNINGKucherov, who will play host to Pastrnak and the Bruins&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-139946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-tampa","9":"tag-tampa-headlines","10":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}