Lightning squander lead, momentum in season-opening loss to Senators

Eduardo A. Encina, Tampa Bay Times on Oct 9, 2025

Published in Hockey

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TAMPA, Fla. — With their newest member setting the tone, the Lightning started the season strong Thursday night against the Senators at Benchmark International Arena, taking a two-goal lead after one period.

But Ottawa has given Tampa Bay trouble, and in the first game of the season its play served as a reminder of how momentum can shift over the course of a game.

Heading into the final minutes, the Senators had sucked all the energy out of the building, and the Lightning looked like the team playing on their heels.

Last season, they struggled to put games away, going 6-6-3 when tied after two periods. And opening night ended with them on the short end of a 5-4 loss.

Shane Pinto’s goal with 1:47 left was the third straight Senators goal, putting Ottawa ahead 4-3. Pinto cleaned up a loose puck brought into the paint by Jake Sanderson. Ottawa then sealed the game on Claude Giroux’s empty-netter with 48 seconds left.

Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov scored his second goal of the game with 14 seconds remaining to make it 5-4, but it was too little, too late.

The Lightning opened their season with a bang, and it was the newest member of the team who set the tone just nine seconds into his first career NHL shift.

That’s all the time it took for recently signed forward Curtis Douglas to become a fan favorite.

Douglas found a dancing partner in bona fide enforcer Kurtis MacDermid and then introduced himself to the Lightning fan base, using his 6-foot-9, 242-pound frame to send several heavy right hands down on the 6-foot-5, 233-pound MacDermid.

As he was escorted to the penalty box, Douglas brought the home crowd into the season, waving his hands in the air and snapping off his helmet and tossing it to the ice.

In four days, Douglas has gone from an impromptu stopover in Las Vegas, where he learned he had been claimed by the Lightning from Utah while he was driving to Tucson, Ariz. — ditching his car at the airport there and flying cross country to Tampa — to being thrown into a new organization.

The Lightning, whose need for extra physicality became obvious during their final two preseason games against Florida, offer the 25-year-old Douglas an opportunity to live out his dream of playing in the NHL. Before the game, he said he’d “do an army crawl down the ice” to show the team he deserved to stay here.

He didn’t have to do that but certainly found a way to make a quick impression.

And the Lightning seemed to stand a little taller after Douglas’ fight. They had a different edge to them than last season while remaining the skill-laden team that they’ve been.

They jumped out to a quick two-goal lead on a pair of scores 1 minute, 25 seconds apart, both set up by left wing Jake Guentzel.

Oliver Bjorkstrand, the newest member of the Lightning’s power play, scored the first goal of the season on the man-advantage, with Guentzel sending a pass from below the left circle across the paint to Bjorkstrand at the right post.

Guentzel then chased the puck into the right corner and found Brayden Point at the right circle. Point whipped a shot top shelf far side past Ottawa goaltender Linus Ullmark.

Kucherov scored the Lightning’s second power-play goal, skating in to the right circle, faking out Senators defenseman Nick Jensen and snapping a shot from near the right hash past Ullmark to give the Lightning a 3-1 first-intermission lead.

Tampa Bay definitely had a lag in the second period — in part because it became content engaging in a track meet and trading offensive chances — and Ottawa tied the game with a pair of goals in the middle 20 minutes.

Senators defenseman Artem Zub flung a puck toward the net from inside the blue line that hit the post, went off goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy’s back and in to make it a one-goal game. Zub then sent a stretch pass from his own right circle to Pinto, who gained a step on Lightning defenseman Darren Raddysh and beat Vasilevskiy through the five hole.

Throughout the second period and deep into the third, the Lightning struggled to get anything going offensively at 5-on-5 without the benefit of a power play. The Senators locked things down defensively, and Tampa Bay couldn’t establish extended time in the offensive zone.