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Juuso Parssinen

 John Russell/Nashville Predators

The Predators’ first game under new coach Andrew Brunette featured a little bit of everything.

Nashville produced an almost comically bad first period, put on a dominant display in the second and finally — just as it appeared the Predators might pull an upset in the season opener — shot themselves in the skates by taking too many penalties in the third, losing 5-3 to the Tampa Bay Lightning (1-0).

It was hard not to feel, however, that the Preds (0-1) had taken steps in the right direction for much of the game, even if part of the reason for that was due to Nashville’s awful opening 20 minutes. The Preds needed seven minutes to post their first shot on goal, were outshot 12-2 and trailed 1-0 at the end of the first only because of goalie Juuse Saros’ stellar play.

“It’s first-night jitters,” Brunette told reporters at Amalie Arena. “We have some young players, too, [and the Lightning are] a championship-pedigree type team. They came out in the first period and it was men against boys. We weren’t ready for the compete, we weren’t ready to skate, we didn’t manage the puck. We did all the [negative] things that, no matter what you do, success isn’t going to follow.”

But the second period represented a drastic turnaround in favor of the Preds, who tied the game 1-1 on Ryan O’Reilly’s first goal of the season, outshot Tampa 13-5 and held the Lightning without a shot for the final 14:48 of the period.

“It was just reset, get back to moving our feet, win battles,” O’Reilly said. “When we did that, our game started to come.”

When Juuso Parssinen scored just 11 seconds into the third period to give Nashville a 2-1 lead, things looked promising. But the Preds’ hopes died in a slew of whistles, as Tampa Bay’s next three goals came on a power play, a penalty shot and another power play — the last one giving the Lightning a 4-3 lead with 9:48 remaining.

“They gain all their momentum on their power play,” said Brunette, a former interim head coach of Tampa’s biggest rival, the Florida Panthers.

“It’s elite. I’ve seen this record play too many times in this building with the penalties in the third period and changing the course of the game. So it’s a little bit of a learning experience, but overall I thought we played pretty well.”

A few positives the Preds can take out of the game as they ready for Thursday’s home opener against the Seattle Kraken:

The team’s new top line of Filip Forsberg (two assists), O’Reilly (one goal, one assist) and Parssinen (one goal) combined for two goals, three assists and 12 shots on goal.

The Preds’ power play netted a goal on four opportunities, as Tommy Novak beat Lightning goalie Jonas Johansson with a wicked wrist shot from the left face-off dot. Brunette has taken the reins of the power play this season, after it finished 27th in the league with a 17.6 percent success rate last season.

After getting vastly outplayed in the opening 20 minutes, the Predators outshot the Lightning 29-22 over the final two periods, producing nine high-danger chances to the Lightning’s five, per Natural Stat Trick.

Would the Predators have made a statement by beating the Lightning — back-to-back Stanley Cup winners in 2019-20 and 2020-21 — on the road in Brunette’s first game?

Absolutely. But given the way things started, the Preds looked by game’s end like a team that had already made progress during the coach’s first 60 minutes behind the bench.