Nikita Kucherov notched a goal and tallied his 700th career assist as the Tampa Bay Lightning opened the game’s restart with a 4-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs. Kucherov set up Gage Goncalves for a second-period strike, a play that also produced Goncalves’ own assist on Kucherov’s goal. This milestone placed Kucherov as the 64th player ever to reach 700 career assists and made him the third Russian-born player to achieve it, joining Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin.
Kucherov extended his point streak to a league-best 11 games and hit the 30-goal mark for the ninth season in a row. Brayden Point contributed two goals and an assist, while Charles-Edouard D’Astous returned to the lineup with two helpers.
Andrei Vasilevskiy remained hot, improving to 17-0-1 in his last 18 appearances by stopping 32 shots as Tampa Bay stretched its winning streak to six and moved to a 20-1-1 record over their past 22 games.
Lightning head coach Jon Cooper was absent following the death of his father, Robert, earlier in the week, and he also missed Thursday’s game at the Carolina Hurricanes.
For the Maple Leafs, John Tavares and Matthew Knies found the back of the net, while William Nylander collected two assists. Goalie Anthony Stolarz, who had been out for over two months with an upper-body injury and made three relief appearances before the Olympic break, stopped 32 shots in his return.
In their second meeting of the season and the first game of a back-to-back for both teams, both Kucherov and Point appeared to have scored in the first period, but Toronto challenged and successfully overturned both goals for offside.
Vasilevskiy denied Nylander’s late first-period deke and backhand-forehand attempt with under three minutes to play, preserving a scoreless opening frame while the Leafs held an 8-4 shot edge.
The action picked up in the second, as Point took a feed from D’Astous, faked around a defender, and beat Stolarz on a sharp-angle shot at 7:07. Goncalves followed 51 seconds later, converting a feed from Kucherov to extend the lead.
Late in the second, Vasilevskiy made another crucial stop on Nylander’s breakaway with eight minutes remaining. Kucherov then struck at 2:59 of the third to push the lead to three, but Tavares answered on the power play at 16:19.
Point struck again just 11 seconds after, with Kucherov and Goncalves each picking up a second assist on the play, though Knies answered at 17:13 to trim the deficit to two.
