Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov has won this year’s Ted Lindsay Award for the league’s most outstanding player as voted on by his peers, the NHL announced Wednesday.
Kucherov wins the 2025 honors six years after his first win, when he led the league in assists (87) and points (128) in the 2018-19 campaign. He also won the Hart Trophy that year, which he’s a finalist for again this year alongside the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl and the Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck.
This year, Kucherov was the only overlap between Lindsay and Hart finalists – the latter voted on by Professional Hockey Writers Association members. For the player-voted honors, Kucherov beat out Avalanche stars Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.
It’s not as if Kucherov needed any more hardware to cement his Hall-of-Fame case, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The Russian superstar turns 32 later this week but is still fully in his prime, now capturing back-to-back league scoring titles in addition to his 2019 Art Ross. He becomes the 12th player in league history to win multiple Ted Lindsay (formerly known as the Lester B. Pearson) Awards, joining Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, and Alex Ovechkin as the only active players to do so.
The award stands as nice recognition to a season full of even more milestones for the two-time Stanley Cup champion. He recorded a league-high 121 points and 84 assists in the regular season, the latter of which made him just the fourth player in league history with three consecutive 80-assist seasons. He also led the league outright in points per game (1.55), primary assists (56), power-play points (46), and power-play assists (38) in 2024-25 while averaging 21:11 per game, the second-highest deployment of his career after last season.
Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images.