The Backcheck: Home opener spoiled by Flyers

In uncharacteristic fashion, the Tampa Bay Lightning surrendered three straight goals and gave up a 2-0 lead in a 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night in the home opener at AMALIE Arena.

"This is a stinger," said Lightning head coach Jon Cooper. "We should never leave this game with zero points. We probably should've left with two.
"It happens in this game. It happens when you play 82 games. Unfortunately for us, it's happening a lot early in the season. But this group should close that game out and we didn't. That's probably a little bit of a concern."
Going into Tuesday's contest, the Bolts had won 10 consecutive regular-season contests against the Flyers. Tampa Bay outscored Philly by a combined score of 14-4 over three meetings in 2021-22.
Last season, the Lightning lost just three games in which they held a two-goal lead and only one of those losses came in regulation, while the other two ended in a shootout and earned the Bolts a point.
While some things from last season are different, others are the same, including Steven Stamkos playing hockey at an elite level. He stayed red hot and recorded two more goals for the Bolts on Tuesday night, both on the power play.

Stamkos leads the NHL with six goals and four power-play goals while only three players have recorded more than his seven points through four games. Tampa Bay's captain is just the second player in franchise history to open the season on a four-game goal streak after Nikita Kucherov scored in the first seven games of the 2017-18 season.
"Just the same old me," said Stamkos on his fast start. "I'm going to try to put myself in areas to score and, like I talked about before, [I had] a great offseason of training and felt good coming in.
"I was trying to pick up where I left off last year and the puck's finding the back of the net, but [we'll] try to translate that into some wins here."
Philadelphia got on the board at the 10:43 mark of the second period to make it a 2-1 game before scoring a power-play goal just 1:06 into the third period to tie things up. Later on, after a turnover in front of the Lightning net, Noah Cates jumped on the puck and beat Vasilevskiy to put the Flyers up 3-2 with 7:16 left in the third.
"We've been chasing the game a lot," said Cooper. "Tonight, we weren't chasing the game, but we were chasing it in the third.
"You look over at their bench and there was a whole lot of life on that bench in the third period and you look down on our bench and there wasn't any."
The Lightning pushed hard after Philadelphia's third goal, but it was too little, too late as Tampa Bay dropped to 1-3-0 to start a season for the first time since the 2011-12.
Tampa Bay had several positive moments throughout the course of the game. The line of Brandon Hagel, Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov was very dangerous. Stamkos continued his streak of not just goals, but strong overall play as well. Victor Hedman was flying around the ice and extended his point/assist streak to three games. Andrei Vasilevskiy was sharp, as usual, with 21 saves on the night.
"It wasn't all bad," Stamkos said. "I think we put up 40 shots. Power play was good. Faceoffs were better. [Those were] some of the things that we talked about coming into this game.
"It felt like we were putting it together for most parts of the game. [We] can't look at this as if it's a complete mess. We've got to start somewhere.
"We improved in some areas. Now let's improve on some others when we're playing with the lead, especially in the third."

Over the past several years, one of the Lightning's biggest strengths has been closing out games and suffocating their opponent after gaining the lead. Through strong defending and decision-making, Tampa Bay has been able to have a lot of success finishing games in the past. That will need to improve as the season rolls along and that starts with a strong focus on the D-zone.
"We had chances to score," Cooper explained. "I'm fairly certain the analytics for both teams will sit here and say we had more chances. But it's not about how many you score.
"We didn't need any more. We had the two and we were done. We didn't need to score any more goals. You can sit here and say if we would have got the next one, that would have put Philly away.
"That's not how it works. You have to defend your way to wins. That's what we had to do and we didn't do it."
It's early, but these games matter once the end of the regular season rolls around. With just two points through the first four games, the Bolts will look to get things back on track Saturday night with a matchup against a tough opponent in the Florida Panthers at FLA Live Arena.
The Lightning need to start stashing some points and that's something Cooper has been preaching for years. The early days of the regular season are huge.
"We know how important it is to win in the regular season, especially early," said Cooper back in 2018. "You can go on unbelievable runs the last 30 games of the year and still not make the playoffs. That means you probably had a lousy start and it's hard to chase, so you want to make sure you're not doing that."