Not a Rivalry? Florida Panthers vs. Tampa Bay Lightning Still Felt Like One
Matthew Tkachuk declared that the Panthers-Lightning series was not a rivalry, but it surely lived up to every sense of the word.
TAMPA — Round 4 of the Battle of Florida goes to the Florida Panthers.
After the Tampa Bay Lightning knocked Florida out of the playoffs in 2021 and 2022, the Panthers responded with back-to-back five-game series wins in the first round in 2024 and 2025.
When they got swept by the Lightning in 2022, the narrative from Florida was that they needed to learn how to be more like Tampa — and they did so by adding sandpaper and defensive structure in the form of Matthew Tkachuk and head coach Paul Maurice.
The Panthers have since won eight of the 10 playoff games they played against the Lightning on the heels of two-straight appearances in the Stanley Cup Final. And now their quest to defend their 2024 Stanley Cup title continues.
“I don’t know if it’s really a rivalry,” Tkachuk scoffed postgame while speaking with the ESPN broadcast. “It’s nice to beat them back-to-back years — both in five.”
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As lopsided as the final result was the past couple of years, the Lightning were the ghost the Panthers were chasing before they became the team they are now. In each of the two years Tampa Bay defeated Florida, they made it to the Stanley Cup Final. And now the Panthers are looking to return the favor after beating them en route to their first Stanley Cup last season.
Florida was a rush-heavy team in 2022, becoming the only team in the salary cap era to score more than four goals per game in the process, and its attack was stifled by a Lightning team that slowed them down in the neutral zone and held them to just three goals in the series.
The Panthers flipped the script on the Lightning in the past couple of seasons. They have become a heavy forechecking team that slows teams down in the neutral zone. They held NHL leading scorer Nikita Kucherov without a goal in the series while holding the league’s fifth-best power play to just two goals on 18 chances.
”Every year, it keeps getting harder and harder,” captain Aleksander Barkov said. “They have won cups and they have been in the Finals. They know what it takes. And now we’ve done the same thing, so we also know. It was a really hard series last year and this year it was even harder, so I’m just happy we won this year.”
This series had its fair share of nastiness for something that Tkachuk declared “not a rivarly,” too.
It had its fair share of suspension-worthy hits — Brandon Hagel got one game for a high hit on Aleksander Barkov away from the puck in Game 2 while Aaron Ekblad got two for elbowing Hagel in the head in Game 4 — and with that came a lot of beef in between.
It’s safe to say, when Ekblad and Hagel make their return to the rivarly next season, there will be some more unfinished business between the two squads.
“I would buy season tickets to the four games that will get played next year,” coach Paul Maurice said. “I would have Bruins tickets for when we play Boston and now Tampa. And it’s real similarity.
“The first Boston series was very heavy. The next Boston series was mean. It was nasty, and that’s what happened here. Two teams right in their prime, very competitive men, Tampa has had success, so it got nasty this year because of the playoffs last year and the fact that we’re rivals, but also because we’re at the same place with our teams. Legitimate teams.
“It’s good to be the ticket sales guy in both cities.”