The Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Nashville Predators 5-3 in the NHL regular-season opener on Tuesday night, with Jonas Johansson making 28 stops in his first start in place of the injured Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Nicholas Paul had two third-period power-play goals.
Johansson was brought in as Vasilevskiy’s backup. Vasilevskiy had back surgery two weeks ago and will be out for six to eight weeks.
“His game was quiet,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “He made himself big. He wasn’t erratic. He just plays positional goal. When the heat got turned up, his heart rate didn’t go up. You’d have to say he passed the test.”
The Lightning’s Brandon Hagel converted a penalty shot, while Nikita Kucherov also scored twice. Brayden Point contributed three assists.
The Lightning are 20-9-2 in season openers, the highest winning percentage in the NHL (minimum of 10 games played). Juuse Saros of Nashville stopped 29 shots.
In Andrew Brunette’s first game as Predators coach, Ryan O’Reilly, Juuso Parssinen, and Tommy Novak all scored.
“I felt good about our game,” Brunette said. “Just against this team, we talked about it coming in, you can’t get into penalty trouble. Their power play is elite. I’ve seen this record play too many times in this building”
Lightning captain Steven Stamkos, who is in the final year of an eight-year, $68 million contract, had an assist. Tampa Bay general manager Julien BriseBois has stated that the salary-cap-constrained team will not initiate contract negotiations until after the season.