Bolts Preview: Nikita Kucherov Jersey Card

This will likely be the preface to all of this year's Season Preview posts: 2020 is a different beast and requires adaptability; in my case, it means the joint posts with my "main/personal" blog will not be in the "player here/analysis there" format but rather the entire scope of the analysis will take place here and the player will have some sort of direct connection to what's written. Caveats: at this point, despite the season being set to start in Mid-January, several impact players haven't found a team yet and quite a few teams are currently above the salary cap, which means there is much maneuvering left to do.

One team whose cap cunnundrum was solved today is the Tampa Bay Lightning, who not only have the strongest team on paper but are also the reigning Stanley Cup champions. Unfortunately, the $9.5M in cap space comes in the form of an injury to star Nikita Kucherov that will see him miss the entire regular-season.

What makes their odds look good:
Despite losing Kucherov, they essentially replace him in-house with the return of captain Steven Stamkos, who missed half of last season and all but one playoff game, and a forward corps that still includes Brayden Point, Ondrej Palat, Anthony Cirelli, Alex Killorn, Blake Coleman, Tyler Johnson and Yanni Gourde, which means goals will still come often for the Bolts. Add a Vezina-winning goalie in Andrei Vasilevskiy, a Norris and Conn Smythe winner in Victor Hedman, a possible future Norris winner in Mikhail Sergachev, former All-Star Ryan McDonagh and a good support cast on defense and you've got one of the best teams in the salary cap era (although weaker than last season's with the departures of Zach Bogosian, Kevin Shattenkirk and the inevitable one or two pieces to leave for cap room (Johnson is a regular on the rumour circuit while I personally believe Braydon Coburn might fall victim to a bottom-role salary purge).

Question marks:
The only question mark I would normally have would be with head coach Jon Cooper suffering from messaging fatigue, but a Cup buys him leeway even if he fares badly during this shortened season, although I do not see that happening.

Outlook:
Tampa woud be first in any division, but placing them in the Central means they can even rest players during back-to-backs and move guys in and out of the Taxi Squad in the hopes of staying fresh for the playoffs. If the players accept to sacrifice statistical milestones for legitimate shots at multiple championships, that's one way to to have a clear path to another one.

Prediction:
First in the Central Division.

Kucherov's presence will be missed. While he's taken up more and more room as the years have passed - room that became legitimate as he had led the team in scoring for the past five seasons - this has been Stamkos' and Hedman's team for roughly a decade at this point, and #86 has merely been filling up the opposition's net for them, enough to have played in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 All-Star Games, which is where this card comes into play:

It's card #AS-NK from Upper Deck's 2018-19 SP Game-Used Edition and All-Star Skills Fabrics sub-set, featuring a swatch from the jersey in the picure, used in the 2018 NHL All-Star Skills Competition. Because of the talent in Tampa, Kucherov's career has been a bit overlooked at times, but he has three types of impressive numbers.

First, the comparisons:
His 529 points (212 goals, 317 points) in 463 games over the past six seasons are tied with Chicago Blackhawks forward Patrick Kane for the most in the NHL.

He also holds Lightning team records (the same team tghat once employed Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St-Louis):

Most Playoff Points - 95
Most Career Playoff Goals - 36
Most Career Playoff Assists - 59
Most points in a single season, 128 (2018–19)
Most assists in a single season, 87 (2018–19)
Most points in a single calendar month, 30 (2018–19)
Most assists in a single calendar month, 21 (2018–19)
Most consecutive games with a point to start a season, 11 (2017–18)
Most consecutive games with a goal to start a season, 7 (2017–18)
Most points in a single playoff season, 34 (2019–20)
Most assists in a single playoff season, 27 (2019–20)

He also holds two NHL records:

Most assists in a single season by a winger, 87 (2018–19) (Shared with Jaromír Jágr)
Most points in a single season by a Russian-born player, 128 (2018–19)

And he's still just 27 years old!

Connor Hellebuyck Jersey Card

We're now past the mid-season point of the NHL season and we're starting the see the story lines clearly: which teams are surprisingly good, which ones are a disappointment, which players are having down years, who has risen to elite status, who the most important players to their teams are.

Connor Hellebuyck's Winnipeg Jets may currently be outside the playoff picture looking in - they're three points from the final Western Wild Card spot and three points behind the Dallas Stars in their own division, yet he leads the NHL with 4 shutouts, has played the third-most minutes (2318:40), has faced the most shots at 5-on-5 (1,030) and the most high-danger shots against (283); he is also ninth in save percentage (.917) among goalies who have played over 20 games and is top 10 in even-strength save percentage (.927) despite the Jets losing the likes of Jacob Trouba (trade), Dustin Byfuglien (injury and dispute with management), Tyler Myers an Ben Chiarot (both via free agency) on defense over the summer.

Not only is he the front-runner for the Vezina Trophy in my opinion - ahead of the likes of Darcy Kuemper, Tuukka Rask, Elvis Merzlikins, Tristan Jarry and Ben Bishop, all of whom are part of successful platoons this season and have accrued much more rest than Hellebuyck - but he should also finish in the top-10 for the Hart Trophy if he manages to pull Winnipeg into the postseason, behind the likes of Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin, David Pastrnak, Jonathan Huberdeau and slightly ahead of Roman Josi, Leon Draisaitl and Artemi Panarin.

He just played in his second career All-Star Game last week; here's what he looked like in the first one, two seasons ago:

It's card #AS-CH from Upper Deck's 2018-19 SP Game-Used Edition collection and All-Star Skills Fabrics sub-set, which I won in a group break. It features a light blue jersey swatch that UD guarantees was worn in the skills competition:

I like this. It's specific, it's clear, there's a picture as proof of authenticity.

I had predicted he would be this good at about this time in his career in 2017, but let's not forget he was ahead of even my expectations when he was nominated for the Vezina two years ago.

Corey Crawford Jersey Card

In the past few years, one goalie has usually dominated the entire NHL season to the extent where they overshadow the rest (Sergei Bobrovsky last year, Braden Holtby in 2015-16, Carey Price in 2014-15), with Devan Dubnyk usually pulling the short end of the stick; only Bobrovsky has been able to replicate such high-level performances onto multiple seasons, although a case can also be made for Holtby last year.

This year, the goalie towering over everybody else is Corey Crawford.

I mean, it's no surprise, really; Patrick Kane said he deserved the Conn Smythe more than he did himself when the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in 2012-13 after posting a 16-7 record with a 1.84 GAA and .932 save percentage, but the fact is that "Crow" was just as good when the Hawks won again in 2014-15 on the superhuman play of Duncan Keith with a 13-6 record (he had trouble against the Nashville Predators in the first round, which didn't stop his overall statistics line falling at 2.31 and .924).

And he's been just as good and steady in the regular season, too, with two Jennings Trophies in the past five years and a fifth-place Vezina finish in 2015-16 when he posted a league-leading 7 shutouts (in just 58 games).

This year, he stands second in the NHL for save percentage, and he missed three games to injury earlier in the season, where the Hawks lost all three games; upon his return, they won five in a row. Talk of Hart Trophy nominations should not be off the table for Crawford, especially if the Hawks sneak into the playoffs on his strong play.

They'll need Anton Forsberg to hold down the fort while Crow's injured, though.

Here he is wearing the Blackhawks' white (away) uniform, on card #AS-20 from Upper Deck's 2015-16 SP Game-Used Editions set and All-Star Skills Fabrics sub-set:

It features a decent-sized red swatch that is either from one of the horizontal lines or the team's red jersey.

Marc-André Fleury Jersey Card

Anyone who's followed hockey at least semi-closely in the past year and a half is aware of the tough situation Marc-André Fleury has dealt with, from being the Pittsburgh Penguins' first-overall draft pick in 2003 to netting the game gold medal-winning own-goal at the World Juniors, to making the last-second save against Nicklas Lidstrom that won the Pens the Stanley Cup in 2009, to a return to grace with Top-5 numbers to a concussion leading the way to rookie Matt Murray stealing his job to two consecutive Cups, one of them (last year's) which would not have been possible without Fleury's own stellar goaltending in the first two rounds as the Pens' lone good player, to his being chosen at the Expansion Draft by the Vegas Golden Knights.

It's been a wild ride, but through it all, it has emerged that he is, quite simply, the best teammate in hockey. I always respected him as an individual, he's done great things in the community in Pittsburgh as well as back home in his native Montréal suburb of Sorel.

He's also emerged as my third-favourite NHL goalie (behind Jaroslav Halak and Corey Crawford), which led me to update my jersey collection last September:

If they get James Neal to re-sign, my dark Vegas jersey will be of him. Both former Pens played crucial roles in the Golden Knights' 2-1 win over the reigning Cup champions last night.
I hadn't featured Fleury with the Pens before, so I thought today might be a good time for that, with card #AS-24 from Upper Deck's 2015-16 SP Game-Used Edition collection and 2015 All-Star Skills sub-set:

It shows him wearing Pittsburgh's black (home) uniform with a large matching swatch that was presumably worn at the 2015 All-Star Game skills competition, although the back of the card simply states it was worn during an "official NHL game" (not "regulation" nor "playoff", so it's vague enough to mean whatever you want it to).

I'm glad he's found a home, and I'm extremely happy "my" Knights are doing great.