The Tampa Bay Lightning bolted the Philadelphia Flyers 3-2 Thursday night as they relied on Simon Gagne, a former ace player with the Flyers.
Gagne knew the weak points of his former team and made full use of that by helping this team to victory as they took an early lead although it was later curbed by good play from the Flyers.
Steven Stamkos, Dominic Moore and Paval Kubina each scored a goal to lead Tampa Bay to a 3-0 start all the while defeating the Flyers on their home ice and what was their first loss of the season. Nikolay Zherdev and Danny Briere scored two goals for Philadelphia thus minimizing the loss to 3-2.
Samkos scored the first goal with just five minutes into the game when he used a feed from Steve Downie, scoring his fourth goal in three games. Flyers' Zherdev evened the score in just under a couple of minutes as he used an assist from James van Riemsdyk. Tampa Bay took a 2-1 lead in the second when Moore backhanded a rebound through Flyers goalie Brian Boucher.
Kubina scored the deciding goal right in the start of the third period. Briere cut the lead to 3-2 when he wristed a shot past goalie Dan Ellis, who had a total of 24 saves for the Lightning.
Gagne played his first 10 season for the Flyers and took his team to the Stanley Cup finals last year. He was traded to the Lightning during the summer because of salary issues.
