Lehkonen scored a power-play goal on a one-timer from between the circles at 6:44 of the second to make it 3-2. Grubauer got a piece of the shot, but it trickled past him.
“I felt good. Some parts were rusty,” Lehkonen said. “Nate [MacKinnon] made a great pass there. He laid it on a platter for me, so I was just trying to hit the net.”
Rantanen extended the lead to 4-2 with a power-play goal at 9:11, one-timing Makar’s pass from the right face-off dot. The play was unsuccessfully challenged for offsides.
“The linesman, I guess, looked at it again after they had called offsides,” Bylsma said. “They looked at it again, and I think there's an interpretation of the rule in terms of whether we intentionally played the puck back. But we were the last team to touch the puck back, and that's what they ruled.”
Beniers scored to make it 4-3 at 17:31 of the third period with Grubauer on the bench for the extra attacker.
“We just need to be a little bit better all the way through, man to man, every guy in here,” Beniers said. “We scored some goals, but we really need to put together a full 60 [minutes] and find a win.”
Rantanen scored an empty-net goal 24 seconds later to make it 5-3, and Kovalenko scored at 19:58 for the 6-3 final.
NOTES: MacKinnon became the second player in NHL history with multiple season-opening point streaks of at least 13 games (13 games in 2019-20), joining Wayne Gretzky. … MacKinnon recorded his eighth career five-point game and tied Evgeni Malkin for the second most among active players. … MacKinnon and Makar became the third set of teammates in NHL history with simultaneous season-opening point streaks of at least 13 games, joining Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito (15 games) with the Bruins in 1973-74, and Dimitri Kvartalnov and Joe Juneau (14 games) with the Bruins in 1992-93. … McCann skated in his 600th career NHL game.