Kucherov Breaks Stamkos's Lightning Points Record at 1,138 in Utah

Nikita Kucherov tied Steven Stamkos for the Tampa Bay Lightning points record on Tuesday night in Las Vegas, reaching 1,137 career points with a goal and two assists in a 6-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights. The tying point was his own goal, a breakaway at 5:16 of the third period. He reached the total in 888 games; Stamkos needed 1,082, and that 194-game gap is the real story of the record.

Update, October 24 (final): Utah won the game 5-4 in overtime, so the record night ended in a loss. Tampa Bay led 4-2 in the second period after Conor Geekie’s goal at 5:32, but Anders Lee and Dmitri Simashev scored less than three minutes apart to tie it 4-4 through 40 minutes, Reuters reports. After a scoreless third, Simashev scored his first career game-winner at 1:44 of overtime, slipping in a pass from Barrett Hayton after breakaways by J.J. Moser and Nate Schmidt were stopped in the first 68 seconds of the extra period. Mammoth goalie Karel Vejmelka made 29 saves and earned the secondary assist on the winner, while Dennis Hildeby made 23 saves for Tampa Bay on the second night of a back-to-back, with captain Victor Hedman out. The record point itself was celebrated the way these moments are: Reuters reports the entire visiting bench emptied onto the ice to surround Kucherov after his assist on Point’s power-play goal. No Stamkos comment on losing the record was found in reporting at the time of this update. Stamkos spent the night scoring Nashville’s opening goal in Pittsburgh, in the game covered by the Crosby linesman-collision and Penguins overtime win.

Update, October 24: The record is broken. Kucherov’s 1,138th point came on an assist on Brayden Point’s power-play goal in the first period at Utah on Saturday, Sports Illustrated reports, with Tampa Bay leading 3-2 after the first period. The final result is now covered in the update above.

Update, October 23: Anthony Cirelli is back. The Hockey News confirmed Friday that Tampa Bay’s center returned to the lineup for the Colorado game after Tuesday’s undisclosed exit, resolving the availability question this page has carried since October 21. At the time of writing, Colorado led 3-0 in the second period and Kucherov was still scoreless, so the record remains tied at 1,137 going into the later frames. If it survives Friday night, Tampa Bay plays a back-to-back at Utah on Saturday.

How did Kucherov reach 1,137 points on Tuesday?

He built the night in layers, and the NHL’s game recap records each one. Kucherov assisted on Brandon Hagel’s power-play goal at 4:11 of the first period. In the second, he chased down a rebound below the goal line and set up Anthony Cirelli in front, a goal that put Tampa Bay ahead 3-2. The record point came on his own stick in the third: he poked the puck away from Vegas defenseman Jeremy Lauzon at the Tampa Bay blue line, skated in alone and beat Carter Hart on the blocker side, as Daily Faceoff’s account of the milestone describes the play. Three points on the night took him from 1,134 to 1,137, exactly where Stamkos has sat since leaving for Nashville. AP notes, via theScore, that Kucherov has now scored in all 15 games he has played against Vegas.

His teammates framed the pace rather than the total. “His work ethic, his dedication to the game, and his dedication to the bench has always been there,” Victor Hedman said in the NHL recap. Coach Jon Cooper put it shorter: “That’s what he does. He’s a special talent. Guys like him don’t come around. He’s given our fans a decade of awesome.”

How do Kucherov’s and Stamkos’s totals compare?

The totals match; the shape of them does not. The NHL’s recap gives Kucherov 1,137 points from 405 goals and 732 assists in 888 games. Stamkos collected his 1,137 from 555 goals and 582 assists in 1,082 games. Stamkos scored 150 more goals. Kucherov has registered 150 more assists. And Kucherov reached the same total in 194 fewer games, roughly a season and a half of hockey. One man was the finisher Tampa Bay built its power play around for sixteen years. The other is a winger who creates more than he converts, producing points at a rate the franchise has never had before. Franchise-record pages tend to flatten two different careers into one number; the recent anatomy of Cole Caufield’s overtime-goals record for Montreal is this site’s version of the same argument, and the interest sits in how each player got there.

Who sits below them on the Lightning list?

Nobody else is close. Daily Faceoff lists the rest of the franchise top five as Martin St. Louis with 953 points, Vincent Lecavalier with 874 and current defenseman Victor Hedman with 814. Hedman scored Tampa Bay’s fifth goal on Tuesday, so the only active player on the list was on the ice when the record was tied, 323 points behind Kucherov. The gap between second and third place is 184 points. Kucherov and Stamkos have turned the top of this list into a two-man argument, and the argument ends the next time Kucherov registers a point.

How did the game itself play out?

Twice Vegas pulled level in the first period, through Ivan Barbashev and a short-handed goal from Mark Stone, and twice Tampa Bay answered within a minute, through Hagel and John Carlson. The second period decided it. Cirelli scored at 6:44 and again at 10:09, the second of them the 150th goal of his career, and Hedman made it 5-2 before the period ended. Kucherov’s breakaway was the only goal of the third. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 32 saves, Hart made 15, and the win was Tampa Bay’s third in a row in the first game of a three-game trip. Early-season form lines are forming across the league, from Connor Bedard’s return as Pittsburgh’s captain to the Fantilli and Marchenko reunion game in Columbus.

Why did Cirelli miss the third period?

That is the one loose end from Tuesday, and Wednesday’s reporting filled in the outline without naming a cause. Cirelli scored twice in the second period, his last shift ended with 1:09 remaining in that period, and he did not take a shift in the third. Pro Hockey Rumors’ Wednesday report, citing Jesse Granger of The Athletic, records that he exited after the second period with an undisclosed injury, that it was not clear when he sustained it, and that he was absent from a video of the team leaving the bench after the win. RotoWire’s report adds that there was no update after the game and that he will be considered day-to-day leading into Friday’s match in Colorado. Tampa Bay was already playing with 11 forwards and seven defensemen, so his absence pushed extra minutes onto Brayden Point, Zemgus Girgensons and Conor Geekie, and the extra forwards carried are Dominic James and Scott Sabourin. What the injury is, nobody has said. This desk handles an undisclosed absence the same way it handled the Ben Kindel medical episode on the Penguins’ flight: report the wording that exists, and add nothing to it.

When did Kucherov break the record?

On Saturday, October 24, at Utah, as detailed in the update above. The Colorado chance on Friday, October 23, came and went with Kucherov held scoreless in a 6-3 loss, and the Utah assist on Brayden Point’s power-play goal settled it one night later. He was a second-round draft pick in 2011, scored 18 points in 52 games as a rookie in 2013-14, and has since won two Stanley Cups, two Hart Trophies and three Art Ross Trophies in Tampa Bay colours. Stamkos built his total over sixteen seasons and now plays for Nashville, so the record he held alone is now Kucherov’s outright. For a different kind of deadline in the same league, the Connor Hellebuyck holdout timeline tracks a Friday of its own in Winnipeg.

Did Kucherov get the record at Utah? (Update, October 24)

Yes, and he got it the way he has built most of his total: by setting someone else up. The record point was an assist on Brayden Point’s power-play goal in the first period at Utah, Sports Illustrated reports, and the NHL marked the moment during the game. Tampa Bay led 3-2 after the first period, with Point, Pontus Holmberg and Jake Guentzel scoring, and Kucherov’s assist was his only point of the opening frame.

The fitting part is the shape of the new total. Stamkos reached 1,137 with 555 goals and 582 assists. Kucherov’s 1,138th point came as his 733rd assist, against 405 goals. The record he now owns outright is a playmaker’s record, set by a pass on the power play, on the second night of a back-to-back, four days after he tied it with a breakaway goal in Las Vegas. The final result at Utah is covered in the update at the top of this page: a 5-4 overtime loss, with Simashev’s first career winner. Whatever Stamkos says about losing the record he held alone remains the open item.

Did Kucherov get the record in Colorado? (Update, October 23, final)

No. The Lightning lost 6-3 to the Avalanche on Friday night, and Kucherov was held scoreless, so he remains tied with Stamkos at 1,137 points. Nathan MacKinnon had a goal and three assists for Colorado, Mackenzie Blackwood made 31 saves, and Tampa Bay’s three-game winning streak ended. The record watch moves to Saturday night at Utah, where one goal or assist gives Kucherov the franchise mark outright. The wait extends, but only by a day.