NEW YORK - The Tampa Bay Lightning opened the 2026-27 NHL season with a 5-1 loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, surrendering a 3-0 first-period deficit they never recovered from and going 0-for-7 on the power play.
Head coach Jon Cooper did not spare his team in his postgame assessment. “I think the disappointing thing for me is a coach understands you’re going to lose games, you’re going to win games, but it’s how you go about that,” Cooper said. “I just thought we had limited pushback, and that’s just not a staple of what’s gone on in this room.”
Rangers forward Mika Zibanejad opened the scoring on a power-play goal in the game’s fifth minute, and Pavel Dorofeyev made it 2-0 midway through the first period on a rush chance that followed a Lightning turnover. Eeli Tolvanen tripled the Rangers’ lead in the opening moments of the second period when his centering pass caromed in. Gabe Perreault extended the advantage to 4-1 with four minutes left in the middle frame on an open netfront redirection before Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin added an empty-net goal to close out the 5-1 final.
The Lightning’s lone goal came from Nikita Kucherov, whose spinning pass at the goal line bounced off a Ranger skate and into the net 7:59 into the second period, with Ilya Mikheyev and Brayden Point earning assists. The goal was the third time Kucherov has scored a season-opening goal for Tampa Bay - also doing so in 2023 and 2019 - tying Martin St. Louis for the most in franchise history, a mark St. Louis set across 2008, 2009 and 2011.
Shesterkin was sharp throughout for New York, stopping 24 of 25 shots before the empty-netter. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 20 stops in the Lightning net. Tampa Bay finished 1-for-2 on the penalty kill.
Defenseman John Carlson acknowledged the rough start but pointed to a deeper problem than first-game rust. “There was going to be some bobbled pucks, there was gonna be some misconnections on game one of the season,” Carlson said. “I think that’s a little bit of what’s expected, but I think there was just missing that little oomph in our game that we expect from each other and that’s why we came up short.”
Forward Brandon Hagel was measured about the 0-for-7 power-play performance. “Those types of things, you’ve just got to go back to the drawing board I think,” Hagel said. “It’s one game. It’s one of those things, I’d be more worried about 5-on-5 than I would be about the power play. Once we get that back on track, I think everything kind of clicks.”
The Lightning return to Benchmark International Arena in Tampa for their home opener Saturday against the Washington Capitals at 7 p.m.