Videolicious
TAMPA -- As familiar as the teams are from two straight meetings in the playoffs, the Tampa Bay Lightning recognizes that the Detroit Red Wings are coming to town with a new look.
The teams meet at Amalie Arena for the season opener tonight (7:30, FSD), 25 weeks after the Wings were eliminated here in the first round of the playoffs.
Since that time, Pavel Datsyuk has departed, and Frans Nielsen, Thomas Vanek and Steve Ott have arrived.
Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said Nielsen was the closest the Wings could have come to balm the loss of Datsyuk and joked that Dylan Larkin -- whom he coached as part of the North America coaching staff at the World Cup of Hockey -- “is a year older, a year wiser.