Is Nikita Kucherov A Household Name Yet? Because He Should Probably Be A Household Name By Now
All Nikita Kucherov sees every time he shoots the puck:
And with that goal last night, Kucherov became just the 4th player in the last 30 years to score at least 1 goal in each of his team’s first 6 games. The last 3 who have done it? Steve Yzerman, Mario Lemieux and Keith Tkachuk. Maybe you’ve heard of those guys before. 2 current Hall of Famers and 1 future Hall of Famer. Not a big deal or anything. And now you’ve got Kucherov joining the mix. Finished up 2nd last season in the scoring race with 40 goals, and then starts this season off with 7 goals in 6 games (he also had the game winner last night).
Now in no way am I saying that Nikita Kucherov is underrated. You don’t score 40 in a season and not get the respect that you’ve earned. But what I am saying is that I feel like there are plenty of casual hockey fans out there who probably aren’t too familiar with the name Nikita Kucherov. Just think about it. He’s not even the biggest name on his own team. Most people think of the Tampa Bay Lightning and they automatically go to Steven Stamkos. After Stamkos, plenty of people probably go to Hedman. Once you go past Hedman, it’s a crap shoot. You’ve got people who will go to Tyler Johnson since people always forget that he was undrafted. You could get people who still think Jonathan Drouin is on the Bolts. You might get a guy like Riggs who says Alex Killorn because Killorn went to Harvard which just so happens to also be the university which Riggs attended. But the biggest star on the team is Kucherov and it’s about damn time the rest of the world agrees with that. Just look at this snipe from their win in Pittsburgh on Thursday.
Poor Antti Niemi still has no idea where that shot went. When you can shoot the fuck out of the puck like that, there’s not a single goalie in this league that can do anything about it. Goalies in the NHL are like quarterbacks in the NFL. There might be 4 good ones. So as long as Nikita Kucherov isn’t playing against any one of those tendies, he’s going to score every night he’s on the ice. Maybe he’ll be a household name by the time he puts up 50 this year.
P.S. – In case you forgot, Nikita Kucherov called out some of his teammates in the offseason saying some guys “got their money and stopped working”. This right here is how you take over a team. Any asshole in the world can just randomly call people out. It takes a leader to not only call guys out, but then start the next season with a 6-game scoring streak to back it all up.