Tampa Bay Lightning-Atlanta Thrashers: Bolts Open to Bad Bounces

After a promising pre-season and a renewed confidence, the Tampa Bay Lightning opened the season with a disappointing 6-3 loss to Southeast Division rival Atlanta.

While Mike Smith's goaltending did seem a bit suspect, the game wasn't as ugly as the score indicated.

It seemed the hockey gods wanted to make the Lightning wait at least one more game before their turnaround can begin.

Bounces, penalties, and dumb luck seemed to turn into Thrasher goals and did they ever score many.

Illya Kovalchuck scored twice, while Atlanta rookie Evander Kane earned his first point of his NHL career, assisting on a second-period goal.

Tampa Bay found themselves down 4-0 late in the second period. Unlike the previous two years where the Lightning would have just given up, Tampa Bay came roaring back.

Two goals by Martin St. Louis and another by Andrej Meszaros pulled Tampa Bay within one with 15 minutes left to play in the game.

Rich Peverly put the game away with a power play goal and Kovalchuck made any thoughts of a Tampa Bay comeback history.

While six goals is obviously unacceptable if Tampa Bay is planning on contending, the Lightning as a whole looked like a better hockey team, but a hockey team that needs to play together for a little while.

Defensively, there were only 28 shots on Smith, who stopped 22.

The story of the game may be young Thrashers netminder Ondrej Pavelec. Battered by 39 Tampa Bay shots, Pavelec seemed to be everywhere, making a save after save until he finished with 36 saves on the night.

While the disappointing play of Smith is troubling for Tampa Bay, it was encouraging to see the aggression of the defense and the forecheck is no longer a dirty word for the Bolts' forwards.

Tampa Bay may have had an ugly loss in Game One, but there's got to be some confidence going the rest of the way that this team just needs to jell to become a factor.