THN Archive: On The Up And Up And Up

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On The Up And Up And Up —Aug 7, 2026—Michael Traikos

THE MOST EXCLUSIVE summer skate in the NHL also happens to be one of the least attended. Nikita Kucherov doesn’t plan it that way. In theory, pretty much anyone is welcome to join the Tampa Bay Lightning right winger for a workout. But there are conditions.

You have to show up when Kucherov shows up. You have to be ready to train as hard as Kucherov trains. And there are no skip days – even if the summer skates are sometimes held in early spring.

Case in point: the day after the Lightning’s season ended in a Game 7 loss to the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs – in which Kucherov was held off the scoresheet for the final three games of the series – the 33-year-old was on the phone with his agent, Dan Milstein, asking him to book ice time as quickly as possible. “Everybody wants to be like ‘Kuch,’ ” Milstein said. “Not everyone wants to do the work to be like him.”

Not surprisingly, Kucherov was at the Lightning’s practice facility when the NHL awarded him the Hart Trophy after he finished the season with 44 goals and 130 points. It was his second MVP award and the fourth consecutive year in which he finished in the top three in scoring. But for Kucherov, it was a practice day. So after pulling a hoodie over a sweat-soaked T-shirt for the photo/video op, the three-time scoring champion accepted the award and went back to training. Lightning coach Jon Cooper was on hand for the award presentation and had this to say: “One of the great things that makes ‘Kuch’ Kuch is that he’s never satisfied. He could have 50 goals one year. Well, he wants 51 the next year. He could have 100 assists one year. He might want 110 the next year. That’s the growth of Kuch. He doesn’t put that above the team.”

The Hart Trophy is awarded “to the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team.” You could apply that definition to pretty much any superstar. But take away Kucherov, who finished with 42 more points than any other Tampa Bay player, and the Lightning would not have made the playoffs, never mind finished second in the Atlantic Division and fifth overall in the league. In a year where Brayden Point, Victor Hedman, Anthony Cirelli and several others missed time with injuries, they wouldn’t have come anywhere close to the season they had.

Kucherov not only led the team in goals, assists and points, but he also topped the NHL with a 1.71 points-per-game rate. Then again, as Cooper said, Kucherov keeps raising the bar for himself over and over again.

Not including 2020-21, when he missed the entire regular season because of a hip injury that required surgery, Kucherov has reached the 100-point mark in six of the past eight seasons. Over the past 10 years, only Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Nathan MacKinnon have produced more points, which is even more impressive when you consider that Kucherov has played 78 fewer games than Draisaitl and 64 fewer games than MacKinnon over that time.

It’s also impressive because nothing about Kucherov’s game really stands out. He’s not as fast as McDavid, as big as Draisaitl or as explosive as MacKinnon. His best attribute might be his work ethic, followed closely by his brain, which is probably why Canadiens coach Martin St-Louis called him a “chess master.”

EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE LIKE ‘KUCH.’NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO DO THE WORK TO BE LIKE HIM-KUCHEROV’S AGENT DAN MILSTEIN

Kucherov is always plotting his next move. He’s also always learning and getting better.

Though St-Louis only spent part of one season as Kucherov’s teammate in Tampa Bay, the Canadiens coach jokingly said it was as though Kucherov picked up a career’s worth of knowledge by shadowing him around the ice in an attempt to steal some of his secrets. “I feel like I didn’t have much time with him,” he said. “But I know there’s plenty of times when I played on the power play, I kind of played in that spot (that Kucherov occupies). So there were some times where we spent time in that spot. He was very curious and hungry to get better. I wouldn’t say he was asking a lot of questions. But he was paying attention to a lot of things.”

When Kucherov asked Milstein to be his agent in 2017, the joke was that he did so to get closer to Milstein’s client Pavel Datsyuk. At the time, Kucherov wanted nothing more than to be the next Datsyuk, which led to a lot of questions about how Datsyuk trains, how he shoots and how he handles the puck. When the answer came back that there were no shortcuts, just hard work, Kucherov then asked Milstein what it would take to get a rink installed inside his home so he could practise more. That led Kucherov to install a synthetic ice surface in his garage.

When he’s not at the rink, Kucherov is in his garage shooting pucks and stickhandling. One day this year, Milstein arrived at Kucherov’s house and found him in the garage practising off-balanced, bad-angle shots. He thought nothing of it. But a week later, Kucherov took a pass in the slot from Jake Guentzel and, while off balance, scored the 400th goal of his career. “Oh my gosh, what a goal,” Milstein said. “He didn’t even have to look. He was practising that shot to the point where he cannot miss.”

In the first round against Montreal, shutdown center Phillip Danault was asked what the difference is in defending McDavid and Kucherov. The answer? With McDavid, you have to watch him like a hawk. But with Kucherov, you have to watch everyone around him. “It’s way different than facing McDavid,” he said. “Everyone is mesmerized by McDavid’s speed and the puck carrier. With Kuch, it’s a little different. It’s not really about one player.”

ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS THAT MAKES ‘KUCH’ KUCH IS HE’S NEVER SATISFIED-LIGHTNING COACH JON COOPER

In Game 4 against Montreal, the Canadiens were watching Kucherov – well, mugging might be a more accurate description. But with all the attention they were giving him, others went unnoticed. And so with Tampa Bay on the power play, Brandon Hagel snuck behind the Habs’ defense and connected on a cross-crease pass from Kucherov. A little while later, Kucherov instructed Hagel to once again go hard to the net, and this time, he banked a shot in off Hagel’s body.

Just like that, Kucherov had a pair of assists in a 3-2 win. And he did it in a game where he was seemingly quiet.

Ultimately, Kucherov couldn’t find a way to get Tampa Bay past Montreal, and it was a loss that hit the two-time Stanley Cup champion hard. But while the Habs were battling the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference final, Kucherov was battling invisible defenders in his ongoing pursuit of excellence. And he was doing it alone. “The only competition he has,” Milstein said, “is himself.”