FIRST STAR \u2013 NIKITA KUCHEROV, RW, TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING<\/p>\n
Kucherov, who will play host to Pastrnak and the Bruins in tonight\u2019s 2026 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series<\/a> (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 (12-1-2, 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<\/a> 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: 1-4\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-5th; +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 LIGHTNING Kucherov, who will play host to Pastrnak and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-443719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}