Tampa Bay defeats Hurricanes (and wins a hockey game, too)

What we saw and learned in the Tampa Bay Lightning’s season-opening 4-1 win at Carolina:

Nikita Kucherov: He looks faster.

The game-winner: What. A. Shot. You have to love how much the pass-first Kucherov wanted to rip that puck. Maybe the most shocking thing: he actually celebrated.

Natural Hat Trick: With three goals and an assist, Kucherov is on pace for 328 points this season. That would be a record.

Andrei Vasilevskiy: The Big Cat looked like a new man. Or at least a renewed one. You can’t ask for more from a goalie than to save greater than 95 percent (.952 save percentage) of the shots he faced. He wasn’t the best player on the ice, but his performance has to mean the most to the team’s collective psyche.

Power-Play Watch (Performance): The first unit seldom got organized, regularly didn’t have the preferred personnel on the ice, and yet scored two goals on six tries, which is a higher conversion rate than the one the Lightning led the NHL with last season.

Power-Play Watch (Personnel): Darren Raddysh occupied the weak side. It makes sense to place his boomer of a right-hand shot in that space. His progress will be worth following. … When Nick Paul wasn’t called in to win the draw, Jake Guentzel played down low, which he absolutely must do. After Guentzel received passes from Kucherov, he immediately moved his feet and drove to the net, causing the stellar Carolina penalty kill unit to rapidly break down. It’s not hard to see that lanes will open.

Penalty Kill: The Tampa Bay PK picked up where it left last season, killing all four Hurricane man-advantage opportunities.

The Lineup: Tampa Bay dressed seven defensemen. The top four — Victor Hedman (3 assists), Erik Cernak, Janis Moser, and Ryan McDonagh — played the vast majority of the minutes. You wonder if the decision was about making the early part of the season an extended tryout: three guys (Nick Perbix, Raddysh, and Emil Lilleberg) fighting to be the third defensive pair.

The Defense: Giving up just one goal on the road against a contender is significant, especially coming off an, at best, uneven defensive season in 2023-2024. If Brandon Hagel doesn’t cough up the puck in his own zone in the first period we might have seen a shutout. That was just a bad play from Hagel, who also wasn’t much of a factor in the offensive zone. Ergo, it seems a lock-certainty the ultra-competitive winger plays great in what one expects will be an emotional home opener against Vancouver on Tuesday night.

Perspective: It was just a hockey game. It wasn’t life-or-death — not like the circumstances Tampa Bay area people have faced and are facing. May victory in the more important battles come faster than that Kucherov slap-shot.