Early 3-goal deficit leaves Lightning chasing Devils entire game

Eduardo A. Encina, Tampa Bay Times on Oct 11, 2025

Published in Hockey

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TAMPA, Fla. — After opening Saturday’s second game of the season with one of the worst first periods imaginable, the Lightning’s focus had to be on chipping away at a three-goal deficit.

The Lightning committed too many early penalties against the Devils and spent most of the period in their own end, unable to put together the passes to establish any semblance of offensive zone time.

They had only two shots on goal — just one in 14:33 of 5-on-5 time — in the period.

Still, the Lightning fought back to make it a one-goal game going into the third, and had a chance to tie the score on the power play early in the period.

But Nikita Kucherov’s soft pass on the man advantage was picked off by the Devils’ Jesper Bratt, who beat Andrei Vasilevskiy on a breakaway for a short-handed goal that served as a backbreaker to any momentum the Lightning may have created.

The Lightning’s eventual 5-3 loss to New Jersey puts them in a place they haven’t been in a long time.

They started the season 0-2-0 for just the fifth time in franchise history and the first time in 13 full seasons under head coach Jon Cooper. The last time Tampa Bay started 0-2-0 was 2008-09, beginning Barry Melrose’s failed coaching experiment with the franchise.

The Lightning sputtered in the final two periods in their season-opening loss to Ottawa on Thursday, and that flat-footedness carried into the first period Saturday.

The Devils scored two goals in a one-minute, 47-second stretch to take a 2-0 lead through the middle minutes of the first. After Timo Meier scored on a second-chance opportunity in front, Arseny Gritsyuk skated into the Lightning zone with speed, getting a step on Darren Raddysh across the left circle and centering a pass to Connor Brown, who had position to the front of the net on Emil Lilleberg. A third goal hit off the leg of defenseman Max Crozier and into the back of the net.

The Lightning fought back in the second period, as Crozier found Brayden Point on a line change, and Point fed Yanni Gourde for the Lightning’s first goal on a 3-on-1 at the 7:31 mark in the second. Crozier had the secondary assist on the Lightning’s second goal, which came on Ryan McDonagh’s shot from the point after the Lightning had tired New Jersey skaters hemmed into their own end.

But Kucherov’s soft pass to the point on the power play 4:44 into the third was read by Bratt, and he took it the other way to score, silencing Benchmark International Arena and setting the Lightning back 4-2.

Even though Vasilevskiy’s stat line was subpar — he allowed five goals on 27 shots — the Lightning would have been in worse shape without him after giving up numerous Grade-A chances that Vasilevskiy stopped.