NHL leading playoff scorer Nikita Kucherov left Game 6 of the Stanley Cup semifinal after one shift Wednesday night.
The Tampa Bay Lightning winger had gone to check New York Islanders forward Mathew Barzal and was clearly laboring afterward. After finishing his shift, he went bent over to the dressing room and didn’t return. He still wasn’t on the bench for the second period or start of the third period, though there was no official word on his status.
Replays showed that earlier in the shift, he had been knocked to the ice by a hard cross-check from the Islanders’ Scott Mayfield. That infraction went uncalled.
Here is the sequence of events:
Kucherov had missed the entire regular season after offseason hip surgery but returned for Game 1 of the first round. He was leading the league in playoff scoring with 27 points.
He won the Hart Trophy as league MVP in 2018-19 and was the top scorer in the 2020 playoffs.
The defending champion Lightning entered Wednesday’s game with a 3-2 series lead, needing one win to earn a repeat trip to the Stanley Cup Final.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lightning’s Nikita Kucherov leaves Islanders game after one shift