Hockey fans breathed a sigh of relief. The new season of the National Hockey League has officially started. Fans of the best stick-and-puck sport have been waiting so much for it that the NHL has created a special schedule for the first day of play. Three matches fit into it at once, and the first of them began at an unusually early time for the Americans. Unusual, because early matches on the opening day of the season are rare. So far there have been only five such cases.
The pilot episode of the new NHL regular season was filmed in Tampa, where the local Lightning hosted the Predators from Nashville, the city where the epochal draft ceremony took place last summer. And while the main character of that event, Connor Bedard, was preparing for his debut for the Chicago Blackhawks in the match against his idol, Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, the Lightning were tested by the Predators.
At first, everything turned out great for Tampa. In the first period, the Lightning did not notice any resistance and literally beat the opponent. Predators goalkeeper Juuse Saros did nothing but manage to solve problems due to the mistakes of his defenders. 2-13 in shots on target in favor of the visiting opponents — an indicative statistic.
One of Tampa's shots turned out to be effective, and Nikita Kucherov became its author.
The day before, the Russian forward became the best among representatives of his country in the top 50 active NHL players according to the league and took eighth overall place. A little earlier, the league sent Nikita to third place in the ranking of the best wing forwards, rating Czech David Pastrnak and American Matthew Tkachuk higher. We would, of course, argue with this opinion. Hardly anyone else can boast of such skills and mastery as the Russian. And even more so with two Stanley Cups under his belt.
Many had concerns about whether Nikita would be available. In one of the pre-season matches, Kucherov was injured out of the blue. However, Tampa head coach John Cooper hastened to reassure the public and said that the injury was not serious. As a result, Nikita went out on the ice and took up what he loved.
Not only NHL analysts, but also rivals from Nashville underestimated the Lightning forward. For some reason, at the very beginning of the match, the Predators gave Nikita too much free space and thought that nothing bad would come of it. But in vain. Kucherov immediately punished for such stupidity with a powerful one-timer from the zone not far from the slot.
But in “Tampa” they seemed to know that they should expect goals from Kucherov. On the eve of the game, the club's media service invited fans to give a forecast for the scorer of the Lightning's first goal in the new season and attached a photo of the Russian. Bingo!
For Kucherov, by the way, it’s already a matter of habit to nail “Nashville”. Taking into account previous seasons, the Russian scored effective actions in the eighth match against the Predators in a row. Moreover, he scored in five of the last six head-to-head meetings. And the Lightning forward didn’t stop with just one goal today. Just before the final siren, the Russian scored a double, hitting the empty goal. Kucherov had twice tried to roll the puck to Nick Paul's goal, but he was unable to take advantage of the gifts. As a result, Nikita had to do everything himself.
But the Russian could have completed the double much earlier. At the beginning of the second period, Kucherov went one-on-one with Juuse Saros, but the Predators goalkeeper did not allow himself to be outplayed. Nikita was so angry because of the unused moment that he could not contain his emotions.
As a result, instead of doubling the lead, Tampa allowed the opponent to return to the game. Even at the end of the second period, Ryan O'Reilly scored his debut goal for Nashville, and at the very beginning of the third 20 minutes, the Predators shot at the goal of the injured Andrei Vasilevskiy's replacement, Jonas Johansson, twice in a row. Luckily for him, the referees intervened in time and did not count the Predators' third goal. Just because of the goalkeeper's attack. Tampa, sensing something was wrong, quickly pulled itself together and forced their opponents to make mistakes. As a result, a realized majority and a shootout.
And Tampa’s majority is traditionally powerful. In the middle of the period, the Lightning conceded after an amazingly accurate shot from Tommy Novak, but immediately regained the advantage. Mikhail Sergachev helped. The Russian defender, in his signature style, made a cool shot that Saros barely managed. But the Nashville goalkeeper hit the puck right in front of him, which Nick Paul took advantage of.
The result is 5:3. “Tampa”, thanks to the efforts of its Russian stars, is successfully starting the new season, which is already productive at the very start.