TAMPA, Fla. – With six new players in the lineup, 11 who were not with the Lightning opening night a year ago and Andrei Vasilevskiy out for at least two months, there was much uncertainty as to what the product would look like when the curtain rose on the 2023-24 season Tuesday.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there was plenty of good and bad against Nashville at Amalie Arena. Yet, when the horn sounded after the first of 82 regular-season games, it was the Lightning that prevailed, 5-3.
It was hard to ask for a better start to the season as the Lightning dictated terms and spent most of the opening 20 minutes in the Nashville zone while outshooting the Preds 13-2—it was seven minutes before Jonas Johansson had to make his first save in a Tampa Bay uniform—and taking a 1-0 lead on a rocket by Nikita Kucherov.
That was all good. The bad was being outshot 15-0 over a 17-minute stretch bridging the second and third periods and falling behind, 2-1, going into the third.
The first of two Nick Paul powerplay goals and a successful penalty shot by Brandon Hagel gave the Bolts a 3-2 lead. While Nashville would tie it up, Paul’s second man-advantage goal at 10:52 of the final period proved to be the difference.
Johannson came up with a couple of key saves, including with Nashville employing an extra attacker in the final two minutes, to win his Tampa Bay debut. Kucherov added an empty netter with two seconds left.
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