Nikita Kucherov is one of the most dynamic, productive, and polarizing players in the NHL
today. Since making his debut in the 2013-14 season, he has consistently risen his level of
play, capped by a historic 100 assist, 144 point performance in the 2023-24 season. He does not possess the acceleration of McDavid, the explosiveness of MacKinnon, the unstoppable release of Matthews, or the sheer size anskd strength of Rantanen. But he has consistently been a top-5 point scorer in the league for many years now because of his elite vision, puck patience, skill level, and passing abilities. He has a tenacious work ethic off the ice combined with a confident, borderline arrogant personality on the ice. It all adds to the aura of one of the NHL’s most ruthlessly efficient point scorers. This article will elucidate how Kucherov creates his offense and what makes him such an incredible player.
Kucherov’s Statistics
The following table shows Nikita Kucherov’s statistics from the last six seasons he has played (he missed the 2020-21 regular season due to injury) (To see his full career stats, click here).
| Season | Games Played | Goals | Assists | Points | Points Rank | PPG Rank |
| 2018-19 | 82 | 41 | 87 | 128 | 1st | 2nd |
| 2019-20 | 68 | 33 | 52 | 85 | 7th | 10th |
| 2021-22 | 47 | 25 | 44 | 69 | T-51st | T-2nd |
| 2022-23 | 82 | 30 | 83 | 113 | T-2nd | T-4th |
| 2023-24 | 81 | 44 | 100 | 144 | 1st | 1st |
| 2024-25 | 33 | 17 | 37 | 54 | T-4th | T-1st |
The statistics are elite, and he has continued to improve despite the fact that his supporting cast has gotten worse since Tampa Bay’s back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021.
Looking at some of Kucherov’s advanced statistics using NHL Edge paints an interesting picture. First would be his skating profile. In the 2024-25 season, as of January 3rd, Kucherov had 47 speed bursts over 20 mph, ranking him in the 62nd percentile in the league. For comparison, MacKinnon had 301 and McDavid had 214, both in the 99th percentile. Kucherov is an above-average skater, but nowhere close to the supreme skaters in the league.
Kucherov’s shot speed tells a similar story. His top shot speed of 91.63mph ranks in the 90th percentile and his average shot speed of 62.74mph ranks in the 88th percentile. He is a really good shooter, but not in the top 10% of the league with respect to average velocity.
The final interesting note about Kucherov is his height and weight. He is listed at 6’0” and 180lbs. He is significantly skinnier than the other top players in the league. Even McDavid, who sits on the leaner end of the spectrum, is listed at 6’1” and 194lbs.
So Kucherov is a good but not great skater, has a great but not elite shot, and is below-average in terms of his height/weight profile. How is Kucherov so good, and how does he put up the insane numbers that he does? More specifically, what are the things that Kucherov does better than everyone else in the league if it isn’t top-end speed, shot velocity, size or strength?
What Makes Kucherov so Good
Kucherov has phenomenal vision, top-notch puck poise, and a really high skill level. Let’s dive into more specifics below.
#1: Making the Simple Play, But Making it Quicker than Other Players do
A good portion of Kucherov’s assists come from seemingly innocuous plays, such as passes to the point from the corner or passes from the middle of the ice to the wall on transition rushes. However, it is not a coincidence that Kucherov gets so many assists on these plays. Kucherov processes what he sees in front of him faster than the average NHLer and as a result he is able to execute simple plays quicker and at a higher percentage than most. A lot of NHLers will get a good percentage of these simple plays blocked or deflected by an opposition’s stick simply because they require an extra half-second to process where the open player is.
Another helpful tool that Kucherov employs is the pre-scan, which you can see him do in several of the clips throughout this article. Before the puck touches his stick, Kucherov takes a look out at the ice to map out where everyone is. This allows him to make plays quickly when he does eventually get the puck.
In addition to the more simple quick plays, Kucherov also makes highlight-reel passes with similar rapidity.
Again, the key here is that regardless of how impressive the pass is, Kucherov creates time and space for his teammates by making the right play really quickly. In most of these clips, the puck is on and off his stick with fewer than one stickhandle.
#2: Elite Processing Ability as the Flank Player on the Power Play
All the top scorers in the NHL are productive on the power play, and Kucherov is no exception. He is as close to a perfect power-play flank player as there is. He can create offense in three legitimate fashions: shooting a one-timer, passing to the soft-area bumper position, or passing cross-seam to the opposite flank. Of course, he always has a reload up top to Hedman as well if necessary. As a penalty killer, it is extremely difficult to cover all three of those options, and so Kucherov uses his savvy processing ability to recognize which one is the highest percentage play. He then uses his puck skills to effectively execute that play.
#2A: One-Timer
Without a legitimate one-timer threat, the passing lanes would close off to Kucherov because opposing penalty killers would not pressure him, instead hovering around the other shooting options. But Kucherov does have a legitimate one-timer threat, as shown below.
#2B: Pass to the Bumper
Since penalty killers have to respect Kucherov’s one-timer, pick up the stick of the net-front player, and constantly worry about cross-seam passes, a lot of the time the open player is in the high slot. For many power-plays, the bumper position functions more as a decoy. The bumper player tends to only be open for a split-second as the penalty killers are rotating, and by the time most players process what is in front of them the lane to pass to the bumper has evaporated. But with Kucherov the bumper is a constant threat because of his incredible processing speed.
#2C: Cross-Seam Passes
When the PK forwards are worried about preventing Kucherov from shooting and from sifting pucks to the bumper position, what often slips their mind is preventing cross-seam passes to the opposite flank. These passes, like the ones to the bumper, also tend to have a small window of success. For the passes to get through, they have to be made accurately and with good timing. Kucherov hits these seams with ruthless effectiveness.
#3: Backhand Passes
Most players, even at the NHL level, do not have full confidence in their ability to make hard, direct, and accurate plays with their backhand. Kucherov demonstrates time and again just what a useful skill it can be to be confident in your backhand. Rather than having to take an extra stickhandle to make plays on his forehand, when Kucherov sees a play to be made and the puck is on his backhand, he simply makes the play. More often than not, it ends up being an accurate pass.
#4: Shiftiness Off the Rush
Kucherov does not possess electrifying speed, so in order to create time and space for himself on transition rushes he needs to rely on other tools. Strategy #5 will touch on Kucherov’s puck-patience, a skill he often utilizes to execute pull-ups, cut backs, or lateral attack moves. This strategy will elucidate his shiftiness, a skill which on its own allows Kucherov to beat defenders without skating anywhere close to his top speed.
The first important point is that Kucherov always approaches the opposing defense with his head up. He looks for weaknesses in the defenseman’s position: if their feet are crossed up, their body position is too far forward or backward, or if their stick is inaccurately positioned.
Once he takes this all in, Kucherov decides on an attack plan. He uses a combination of head fakes, coordinated footwork, and quick lateral changes of direction to make life difficult for defensemen. His patented move is to slowly drift towards the middle of the ice and then quickly cut wide as soon as the defender commits to defending the middle.
#5: Puck Patience
Kucherov’s puck patience is most noticeable in the offensive zone when he outwaits defenders to create scoring chances. But it also serves him well in the other two zones of the ice. Because Kucherov is patient, skilled, and always has his head up, he knows when he needs to make a play really quickly and when he needs to hold the puck and outwait the defense to create a better passing or shooting lane.
So many players, even in the NHL, rush plays because they think they have less time than they actually do. This is an understandable impulse given the speed at which the game moves. But Kucherov rarely falls into this trap, and the extra half-second he takes to hold onto the puck can make the difference between turning a puck over and making a pass to an open teammate. It is an impressive skill that impresses the ability that Kucherov is able to “slow the game down.”
#6: Elite Vision
A lot of what I have laid out boils down to the fact that Kucherov processes the game faster than everyone else and has the skill to make the right play extremely quickly. In a way, this makes him sound more boring than other top players. McDavid and MacKinnon have electrifying, explosive speed that make defenders look silly, Ovechkin has a glass-shattering one-timer that puts fear into opposing goalies, and all Kucherov does is make the right play a little quicker than everyone else? To counteract the tendency to undersell Kucherov’s game, I want to finish this article with a brief compilation of Kucherov’s otherworldly playmaking ability. There is nothing simple or easy about these plays, and they showcase how he is able to make plays on the ice that no one else can make.
Conclusion
Kucherov is one of the most interesting NHL players to analyze. He is a consistent top-5 scorer in the NHL but is not incredibly fast, does not shoot incredibly hard, and is not particularly big. He makes his living by having high-end skill, puck patience, and processing ability, which allows him to make plays quicker and more efficiently than other NHLers.
Video taken from InStat. Picture from Christopher Hanewinckel, USA Today Sports.
A Note on the Player Reports
These player reports are designed to provide analysis on what makes the best players in the NHL so good. Please get in touch with me (information found in the Contact Me page) if you have any players/skills that you would like me to analyze and I’ll be sure to respond quickly. For examples of other analyses, see my work on Matthews’ goal-scoring or MacKinnon’s skating stride.
