In Tampa, Nikita Kucherov scored the first goal of the 2023-24 season for the Tampa Bay Lighting on Tuesday night in a 5-3 win for the Bolts over the visiting Nashville Predators.
Kucherov scored twice on the night.
Jonas Johansson made 28 saves in the Lightning win.
“There’s so much emotion that goes into the first game,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “I know there’s 82 of them, but there’s something special about the first one — the home opener. The guys wanted to impress.”
Nicholas Paul also scored a double on the night, his power play goal at 16:52 of the third period gave the Lightning a 4-3 lead in the lead.
“We have a lot of good players, I just try to get them the puck,” Paul said. “My job is to stand there, take the goalie away, find the trash in front and put it in.”
Ryan O’Reilly scored at 16:15 t of the middle frame to tie the game up at 1-1.
“It wasn’t the start we wanted, but we just reset, moved our feet, won some battles and our game started to come,” O’Reilly said. “We had some chances for sure, but their power play beat our power play tonight. We did some good things and have some things we need to clean up.”
The Predators took a 2-1 lead with 11 seconds of fresh ice used in the third period on a strike from Juuso Parssinen .
“I felt good about our game, but against this team you can’t get into penalty trouble,” Nashville coach Andrew Brunette said. “That’s where they gain all their momentum, their power play is elite. I’ve seen this record played too many times in this building with the penalties in the third period and changing the course of the game.”
Paul tied the game, 2-2, on his first of two power play goals a little over two minutes later.
Just 42 seconds later, Brandon Hagel put the Bolts up, 3-2.
Nashville replied with a goal from Tommy Novak at 8:48 of the third.
Kucherov added his second of the night into an empty net for the 5-3 final.
“We have a bunch of new guys out there, and I thought everybody contributed right down the line,” Cooper said. “Everybody had something to do with this win tonight. From the goalie on out. And if we’re going to have success on this team, it’s going to have to come from everybody.”
Juuse Saros made 29 saves in the loss.
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