Nikita Kucherov posts 700th career assist as Lightning top Maple Leafs
Nikita Kucherov scored and recorded his 700th career assist, and the Tampa Bay Lightning resumed the regular season with a 4-2 victory over the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday night.
The right wing fed Gage Goncalves, who later assisted on Kucherov's tally, for a second-period goal to become the 64th player to reach the milestone and the third Russian-born one to do it, joining Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin.
Kucherov, whose point streak moved to an NHL-best 11 games, reached 30 goals for the ninth time in his career.
Brayden Point netted two goals and had a helper, and Charle-Edouard D'Astous returned with two assists.
Improving to 17-0-1 in his past 18 outings, Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 32 shots as Tampa Bay won its sixth straight game and is 20-1-1 in the past 22 matches.
Coach Jon Cooper was not with the team following the death of his father, Robert, earlier this week and will also miss Thursday's match at the Carolina Hurricanes.
John Tavares and Matthew Knies tallied for the Leafs, and William Nylander had two helpers.
After missing over two months with an upper-body injury and finally making three starts before the Olympic break, goaltender Anthony Stolarz stopped 32 shots.
In their second meeting this season and first game of a back-to-back set for both, Kucherov and Point both appeared to score in the first period, but Toronto successfully challenged for offside to take both markers down.
Vasilevskiy's denial of Nylander's deke and backhand-forehand effort with under three minutes left kept the opening period scoreless and the visitors holding an 8-4 edge in shots.
In a faster paced second, Point took a pass from D'Astous then waited out Stolarz, who was hindered by his defenseman Simon Benoit, and buried a sharp-angle shot at 7:07.
Goncalves then doubled the lead by securing a pass from Kucherov and netting a goal 51 seconds later.
Vasilevskiy made another fine stop on Nylander with about eight minutes left, stuffing his backhanded breakaway attempt.
Kucherov hit the net at 2:59 of the third, and Tavares broke the shutout bid at 16:19 on the power play.
Point scored 11 seconds later as Kucherov and Goncalves registered a second assist apiece, but Knies cut it to a two-goal deficit at 17:13.