TAMPA — It started with a feel-good rookie lap and ended with a disheartening division loss.

In between, there were highlight-reel moments, too many turnovers and a blown lead.

Yup, the Lightning were back.

OK, maybe that’s a little harsh. Tampa Bay is a much better team than that.

The Lightning are too talented to waste a pair of two-goal leads. They are too talented to go nearly 19 minutes without a shot on goal. They are too talented to gather 19,092 of their best friends at Benchmark International Arena in the season opener only to lose 5-4 to Ottawa on Thursday.

“You take your foot off the gas for five seconds in this league, and teams will expose you,” defenseman Ryan McDonagh said.

That’s a brutally succinct description of what happened. The Lightning — who will host New Jersey on Saturday night — had everything going their way from the moment they turned the lights on and opened the doors on the 2025-26 season.

Rookie enforcer Curtis Douglas was given the honor of emerging alone from the tunnel for a one-lap trip around the rink in his first NHL warmup and, not long afterward, brought the crowd to its feet when he got in a fight just seconds after entering the game. This was followed by a power-play goal from Oliver Bjorkstrand and, 85 seconds later, another goal from Brayden Point.

Seven minutes into the season, and it was like watching the Savannah Bananas on ice. Nothing but laughter and celebrations. The suspense was gone, and the party was on.

Except the Lightning got drunk on their own success.

They struggled to control the puck. They gave up too many high-danger chances in front of Andrei Vasilevskiy. And, ultimately, they slipped into some of the same poor habits that have plagued them at various times in the past three seasons.

Five of the next six goals were scored by the Senators.

“We should win a lot of games when we score four goals,” McDonagh said.

Scoring is rarely a problem for this team. Even during the past three seasons, when they have failed to get past the first round of the playoffs, the Lightning have scored more goals than any team in the Eastern Conference.

The problem is they too often get careless on the defensive end. And, like the 3-1 lead they had at the end of the first period Thursday, they fail to finish games they should easily win.

Tampa Bay’s winning percentage last season when holding a lead going into the first intermission was .778. That might sound impressive, but it was their worst performance since Jon Cooper’s first full season as head coach in 2013-14.

“The crowd was electric,” Point said, “and it’s too bad we couldn’t have won for them.”

The blown lead was not the only unhappy flashback. While Tampa Bay put up a solid 102 points in the regular season last year, the Lightning were mostly wimpy within the Atlantic. They went 11-12-3 in the division, which means they were 36-15-5 when not playing their closest rivals.

That’s a hard way to get a better playoff seed, and now they’re starting this season 0-1 in the Atlantic.

“Our execution has to get better,” Cooper said. “We’re better than we played down the stretch.”

Is this too critical for the first game of 82?

Of course it is.

There was much to like about how the Lightning played Thursday night. Vasilevskiy, who missed much of training camp with an injury, was pretty brilliant early in the game and stopped a number of odd-man rushes from the Senators.

The power play looked sharp all night with two goals in three opportunities. Bjorkstrand, who was lost for the season after playing just 18 games following a midseason trade, is going to help bring some balance to Tampa Bay’s scoring.

If you look at the game as a single entity on the season’s first night, you would say Tampa Bay has a formidable lineup that could be dangerous when the postseason rolls around in another six months.

Unfortunately, it was hard to watch the second and third periods without having flashbacks to recent disappointments. It wasn’t that the Lightning lost the opener, it’s that they lost it in a way that was a little too familiar.

Maybe this will turn out to be an aberration. Maybe the excitement of the first seven minutes will last longer against the Devils. Maybe the best thing that be taken out of the opener is the realization that talent is still abundant on the Tampa Bay bench.

Maybe, just maybe, the lessons of last season will kick in sooner.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/10/10/lightnings-opener-leaves-room-for-improvement/