Nikita Kucherov posts 700th career assist as Tampa Bay Lightning top Toronto Maple Leafs

Nikita Kucherov scored a goal and recorded his 700th and 701st career assists, and the Tampa Bay Lightning resumed the regular season with a 4-2 victory over the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday night.

The right winger fed Gage Goncalves, who later assisted on Kucherov's tally, for a second-period goal to become the 64th player to reach the 700-assist milestone.

He is the third Russian-born player to get there, joining Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin.

Kucherov, whose point streak moved to an NHL-best 11 games, reached 30 goals for the ninth time in his career.

Brayden Point netted two goals and had a helper, Goncalves had a goal and two assists, and Charle-Edouard D'Astous returned with two assists.

Improving to 17-0-1 in his past 18 outings, Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 32 shots as Tampa Bay won its sixth straight game and improved to 20-1-1 in the past 22 matches.

Coach Jon Cooper was not with the team following the death of his father, Robert, earlier this week and will also miss the team's Thursday game at the Carolina Hurricanes.

Matthew Knies had a goal and an assist for the Leafs. John Tavares also tallied, and William Nylander had two helpers.

After missing more than two months with an upper-body injury and finally making three starts before the Olympic break, goaltender Anthony Stolarz stopped 32 shots.

In their second meeting this season and first game of a back-to-back set for both, Kucherov and Point both appeared to score in the first period, but Toronto successfully challenged for offside to take both markers down.

Vasilevskiy's denial of Nylander's deke and backhand-forehand effort with under three minutes left kept the opening period scoreless and the visitors holding an 8-4 edge in shots.

In a faster paced second, Point took a pass from D'Astous then waited out Stolarz, who was hindered by his defenseman Simon Benoit, and buried a sharp- angle shot at 7:07.

Goncalves then doubled the lead by securing a pass from Kucherov and netting a goal 51 seconds later.

Vasilevskiy made another fine stop on Nylander with about eight minutes left, stuffing his backhanded breakaway attempt.

Kucherov hit the net at 2:59 of the third, and Tavares broke the shutout bid at 16:19 on the power play.

Point scored 11 seconds later as Kucherov and Goncalves registered a second assist apiece, but Knies cut it to a two-goal deficit at 17:13.

--Field Level Media