TAMPA, FLA. • Tristan Jarry had 26 saves, Danton Heinen and Brian Boyle scored early second-period goals, and the short-handed Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning 6-2 in the regular-season opener on Tuesday night.

Dominik Simon, Teddy Blueger, Bryan Rust and Evan Rodrigues also scored, and Kris Letang had two assists for the Penguins, who played without injured stars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. The final three Pittsburgh goals were into an empty net.

“It’s a process but I think we proved that we can play against a team like that, we can play well and we can win,” Simon said.

Tampa Bay got goals from Anthony Cirelli and Andrew Killorn, and Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 29 shots. Star right wing Nikita Kucherov didn’t have a shot on goal, while defenseman Mikhail Sergachev was minus-5.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was in attendance as Tampa Bay unveiled its 2020-21 Stanley Cup banner during a pregame ceremony. The Lightning have won two consecutive titles following pandemic-impacted and abbreviated regular seasons.

“We wanted to kind of spoil it,” Heinen said.

Lightning coach Jon Cooper said the outcome would have the same if the opponent had been the Penguins’ minor league team.

“They beat us to every puck, they worked harder than us, they were better than us in every facet of the game,” Cooper said. “If it wasn’t for our goalie it probably would have been way worse. They came here to win a hockey game, we came here and watched the banner raising, and then watched a team want to win a hockey game. We did a lot of watching tonight.”