announced<\/a> that they would have a \u201csteady stream of Monday matinee \/ European primetime games\u201d throughout the season. It\u2019s going to be interesting to see how local fans react to the early start times in regards to attendance. <\/p>\nYour late-night viewing schedule starts relatively early in the year as the Bolts head Vegas (10:30 pm), Colorado (9:00 PM), and Utah (9:00 PM) from October 20 to the 24. They have four days off to recover from that road trip. Their next western conference trip doesn\u2019t happen until January when they take on Seattle (9:40 PM), Vancouver (9:00 PM), Calgary (3:30 PM), and Edmonton (8:30 PM). Unlike in past seasons, the California trip doesn\u2019t happen in January, rather it\u2019s in March this year as they take on L.A., Anaheim, and San Jose from the 3rd until the 6th before ending the road trip in Chicago. <\/p>\n
Four is the magic number for road trips this season as that\u2019s the longest stretch of games the Bolts will play away from Benchmark. December and March have the most road games with 8, while November has the most home games, also 8. December and March are also their busiest months as the Lightning will play 15 times in December and 14 in March. Outside of the four-day break in October, the only other long stretch of inactivity happens during the All-Star Break when they are off from February 4 to 11.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re looking to hit up a Lightning game when you\u2019re in Tampa, November 14-27 and February 12-23 are your best bets as they have season long six-game home stands over those two stretches. <\/p>\n
With the season not compressed due to an international event, there are more two or three day breaks sprinkled into the schedule. That should benefit a slightly older team like the Lightning, and should help prevent the weariness that seemed to permeate their play at the end of the 2025-26 season. <\/p>\n
The Bolts have a chance to get their season started on the right track as they open on the road against the New York Rangers on October 1. Then they are back on friendly ice for five of their next seven games with their games against Philadelphia and Minnesota as the only 2026 playoff teams that they face. They do have a somewhat important early season stretch where they take on the Sabres, Hurricanes, and Senators at home before heading on the road to Florida, Montral, and Ottawa. That six-game stretch from November 22 to December 5 should be a good measuring stick for the team and could be an early tipping point to see if changes need to be made on the roster. <\/p>\n
Your video tribute games:<\/p>\n
Declan Carlile \u2013 December 12 (Pittsburgh)<\/p>\n
Corey Perry \u2013 January 26 (Los Angeles)<\/p>\n
Mitchell Chaffee \u2013 January 30 (New York Islanders)<\/p>\n
Nick Paul and Darren Raddysh \u2013 February 20 (Toronto)<\/p>\n
Oliver Bjorkstrand \u2013 March 17 (New York Rangers)<\/p>\n
The Hey That Guy on the Other Team is Pretty Good Games<\/p>\n
October 3, November 17 \u2013 Alex Ovechkin<\/p>\n
November 19 \u2013 Connor McDavid<\/p>\n
December 12 \u2013 Sidney Crosby<\/p>\n
February 18 \u2013 Leo Carlsson \u2013 the highest paid player in the league!<\/p>\n
February 20, March 30 \u2013 Gavin McKenna<\/p>\n
February 23 \u2013 Macklin Celebrini<\/p>\n
It\u2019s going to be a long grind of a season. Hopefully it\u2019s a fun one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday, one of the slowest days in professional sports, was a little box of sunshine for hockey fans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-343506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}