Tonight at 7:00 p.m. ET the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins each open up their seasons in a game contested from TD Bank Garden in Boston. The game can be live streamed here. Lightning fans can hear all the hard-hitting action on WFLA-AM, while Bruins fans can do the same by tuning in to WBZ-FM 98.5.
The Lightning will look a little bit different as the team will hit the ice without Vincent Lecavalier for the first time since the 1998-99 season as he signed with the Philadelphia Flyers in the offseason after being bought out by the Lightning. The Bruins, meanwhile, enter the game with a key new addition in Jarome Iginla , who notched 14 goals and 19 assists for 33 points during the 48-game lockout-shortened season last year in time split between the Calgary Flames and Pittsburgh Penguins.
The Bruins are defending their Eastern Conference championship entering this season, while Tampa Bay missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs this year for the second straight season and the fifth time in six years. The Bruins won all three meetings between the sides last season.
The Lightning finished 14th in the Eastern Conference last season, allowing them to draft young promising forward Jonathan Drouin, who surprisingly didn't make the team's roster out of training camp.
"We can second-guess all day long, but to me there's nothing wrong with going somewhere that you're going to get the chance to play in all situations and play every night instead of sitting in a situation where you're not," coach Jon Cooper told the team's website.
Though the Lightning lost all three games, Steve Stamkos managed to notch two goals against the Bruins last season on his way to an impressive year where he scored 29 goals and netted 28 assists for 57 points in 48 games.
The Bruins had a busy offseason, gaining Iginla and Loui Eriksson, but they also lost a lot of key pieces with Jaromir Jagr and Nathan Horton defecting through free agency while Tyler Seguin and Rich Peverley were traded to the Dallas Stars, but the team still has all the confidence in the world after a great season that saw it come within two wins of the Stanley Cup.
"I think we're still a great team and have a lot of potential," center Patrice Bergeron told the team's website. "It's a long season like we all know and we have to make sure we do the right thing. It's so cliché but it's still the same thing again, you have to start all the way back down the mountain and climb our way back up, so that's the way we have to look at it."
The Bruins look to start its Eastern Conference championship defense strong at home while the Lightning look to grab a hold of its season early when these two teams square off tonight.
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