The catastrophe of the Russian genius in America! Kucherov is not like himself, everything could end in a huge failure

Probably, we should have started guessing about this situation in the second half of the regular season, but at that moment everyone was too passionate about the fight of Nikita Kucherov, Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid for the Art Ross Trophy. The Russian from Tampa had, perhaps, the most difficult time in this battle – due to less help from his partners, he had to go for the prestigious personal award mostly on his own. That didn’t stop us from taking this prize, having scored a phenomenal 144 points at the end of the first part of the season.

And it was worth guessing that the exhausting scorer race could have a detrimental effect on Kucherov’s play in the playoffs. After an 82-game regular season marathon, when you try to get the best out of yourself in almost every game, it’s very difficult to also have a couple of killer months in the Stanley Cup. Right now Nikita is proving this, already performing very poorly in the first cup round.

In the opening two games of the Lightning series against Florida, Nikita provided only an assist, and his team returned from the away part of the confrontation with nothing. It seemed to the fans, accustomed to the exploits of the Russian super-scorer, that on his home ice Kuch would once again turn on his usual genius mode and try to stage a comeback for the Lightning. It didn’t work out, at least in the first home game.

Tampa, as in the two previous cases, started the match with a quick goal, but at the junction of the first and second periods it had a powerful period, scoring 3 goals in 213 seconds. Only two of them were counted, but the dash still looked impressive, and Kucherov again scored an assist.

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Literally right there, the Lightning could have finished off the opponent, but another masterpiece in this series was created by Sergei Bobrovsky, who was experiencing his second youth.

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Well, then, unfortunately for the hosts, Florida responded to the unpleasant development of events with a similar, or rather, even more successful breakthrough. It took the Panthers more time to score three goals – almost 20 minutes, but they were all counted, and the Lightning found themselves on the edge of the abyss. By the way, Vladimir Tarasenko responded to Kucherov’s pass from the Panthers – in his 100th Stanley Cup game, the Russian Tank did not go without points.

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Tampa was not ready for a miraculous rescue. The team fought to the last, Steven Stamkos made a save after Andrei Vasilvskiy gave way to the sixth field player, but everything was to no avail – this Florida is stronger, and without the tearing Kucherov, the Lightning have absolutely nothing to oppose it.

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5:3 in the match, 3-0 in the series, and after the next game Kuch and company can go on their earliest vacation in the last five years – the last time they lost the first round dry was in 2019, when they became accomplices of a sensational performance “Columbus”.