By: Amalie Benjamin
@AmalieBenjamin NHL.com Senior Writer
The first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs features 16 teams in eight best-of-7 series, which start Saturday. Today, NHL.com previews the Eastern Conference First Round between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers.
(2A) Tampa Bay Lightning vs. (3A) Florida Panthers
Lightning: 47-26-8, 102 points
Panthers: 47-31-4, 98 points
Season series: TBL: 2-2-0; FLA: 2-2-0
Game 1: Tuesday at Tampa Bay (8:30 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN360, TVAS 2, FDSNSUN, SCRIPPS)
The Battle of Florida is back.
For the fourth time in five years, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers will meet in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
But this time there’s a twist. In 2021 and 2022, the Lightning were the defending Stanley Cup champion; this time the Panthers are. Each time the two teams have faced each other, the winner of the series has gone on to reach the Stanley Cup Final.
The Panthers and the Lightning are potential Stanley Cup finalists this season, coming out of a top-heavy Atlantic Division that will see one very good team make an earlier-than-expected exit.
“I think it’s great for hockey in Florida because there’s two elite teams,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “Either one of them could win the whole thing. And certainly the eyes in Florida and the fans in both cities will be wired right into it. So it’s great for hockey.”
Last year the Panthers beat the Lightning in five games in the Eastern Conference First Round, before defeating the Boston Bruins, New York Rangers and Edmonton Oilers to win the franchise’s first championship.
“We know what they’re about and we know the skill level they bring and the intensity they bring,” Lightning forward Yanni Gourde said. “We’re excited for this challenge. It’s going to be a fun series. I’m excited for the playoffs to start.”
This has not been the regular season that the Panthers expected, with injuries playing a significant impact in recent weeks. Forward Matthew Tkachuk has not played since sustaining a lower-body injury while playing for the United States at the 4 Nations Face-Off on Feb. 15. The Panthers also have been without defenseman Aaron Ekblad, who was suspended 20 games for violating the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program; he will be eligible to return in Game 3 of the series. Forward Sam Bennett was out from April 5-14 because of an upper-body injury and defenseman Dmitry Kulikov was out from March 16-April 14 because of an upper-body injury.
But getting Tkachuk and Ekblad back will be crucial for the Panthers as they attempt to repeat.
“I think we had a real learning experience this year, going through the grind of a regular season after last year,” Maurice said. “We lost some guys for big chunks of time. So it was a grinder for us, but there was lots to learn. We stuck together, cheering for each other. And now we’re at the part of the year that everybody’s really excited about.”
The Lightning have been one of the hotter teams in the second half, starting with an eight-game winning streak from Feb. 4-March 1. They started that day in the second wild card spot in the East, tied in points with the Boston Bruins; they finished the second in the Atlantic, earning home-ice advantage in the first round.
Even in a year of transition, including the departure of forward Steven Stamkos during the offseason via free agency, the Lightning ended up right back where they have been now for eight straight seasons: the playoffs.
“We put ourselves in a position to fight for a Stanley Cup,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “There are 32 teams in this league and there’s only 16 left. We’re one of the 16. Every year we get looked at as, ‘OK, their time is over,’ and every year these guys come back and prove they can do it. It’s been amazing to be a part of for over a decade. This group wants to make more memories. … Let’s see what we can do in the playoffs.”
Game breakers
Lightning: While the Lightning have the top offense in the NHL at 3.60 goals per game, there’s no question which player is above the rest: Nikita Kucherov. The forward surpassed 100 points for the third straight season and fifth time in his 11 NHL seasons, with 121 points (37 goals, 84 assists) in 77 games to lead the NHL. And though he was third on the Lightning in goals, behind Brayden Point‘s 42 and Jake Guentzel‘s 41, it’s clear that Kucherov remains the engine for Tampa Bay in a season in which he won his second consecutive (and third overall) Art Ross Trophy as the the League’s top scorer.
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.693.0_en.html#fid=goog_449078369Play Video
FLA@TBL: Kucherov finishes slick passing play for 4-0 lead
Panthers: Sam Reinhart didn’t approach the 57 goals he scored last season, finishing 2024-25 with 39 goals and 81 points in 79 games, but the forward remains the most likely to pop in a goal for the Panthers, something he managed to do 10 times during their run to the Stanley Cup last season. He plays the most of any forward on the Panthers, averaging 20:30 of ice time this season, and he will be counted on to be a major piece for an offense that was 15th in the NHL averaging 3.00 goals per game.
Goaltending
Lightning: Though the 2023-24 season was a struggle at times for Andrei Vasilevskiy, this season has been a massive bounce-back campaign for the goalie, who appears to have regained the form that led him to win the Vezina Trophy in 2019 and help the Lightning win the Stanley Cup twice. He has been so good that he finished first in the NHL Players’ Association player poll as the best overall goalie after he had a 2.18 goals-against average and .921 save percentage in 63 games. He is backed up by Jonas Johansson, who had a 3.08 GAA and .898 save percentage in 18 games (17 starts) but should see no time in the playoffs if all goes well.
Panthers: Sergei Bobrovsky is one of the few goalies who can match Vasilevskiy in hardware. He has won the Vezina twice (2013, 2017) and nearly won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs last season in leading the Panthers to their first Stanley Cup. The 36-year-old has a 2.44 GAA and .906 save percentage in 54 games. His backup is Vitek Vanecek, who had a 3.00 GAA and .890 in seven games after being acquired in a trade with the San Jose Sharks on March 5. That move came four days after the Panthers traded goalie Spencer Knight, who began the season as Bobrovsky’s backup, to the Chicago Blackhawks for defenseman Seth Jones.
Numbers to know
Lightning: Since the start of last season, Kucherov has 265 points (81 goals, 184 assists) in 158 games, more than Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, David Pastrnak or anyone else in the NHL. And during the past 10 years, since the start of the 2015 playoffs, he also leads the NHL in postseason scoring with 166 points (52 goals, 114 assists) in 145 games.
Panthers: The Panthers have played a lot of hockey of late. From Oct. 13, 2022 until Tuesday, their final day of the regular season, the Panthers played 291 games in 915 days, as they made it to the Stanley Cup Final each of the past two seasons.
They said it
“There were a lot of question marks about what this team was going to look like after we lost a cornerstone of our organization [Stamkos]. I think there was a lot of uncertainty about how things were going to play out. If you look back from then to now, we’ve got 100-plus points. Not only did we make the playoffs but we found a way to get home ice.” — Cooper
“We know what it feels like to win and how hard it takes. We’re just going in day by day, take it day by day. We’re not thinking we’re the defending champs. There’s a lot of really good teams that finished ahead of us in the standings all year. I don’t think we’re the best team going in. That’s our mindset.” — Panthers forward Carter Verhaeghe
Will win if …
Lightning: They do exactly what they’ve been doing during the second half of the season. While the Panthers have been struggling, the Lightning have been soaring. They have all the pieces needed to make a long run through the playoffs, from the goaltending to the offense to the experience to the health. They know how to do what they have to do and what they need to do. All they have ahead of them is to do it.
Panthers: They get healthy and quickly get back up to speed. The Panthers haven’t been able to figure out exactly what their lines will look like given the injuries they’ve had at the end of the season, including to Tkachuk, Bennett, Kulikov, plus the suspension of Ekblad. Even Brad Marchand recently said he wasn’t quite sure how the lines would look come playoff time. So if the Panthers can find their groove quickly, they’ll be in good shape.
How they look
Lightning projected lineup
Yanni Gourde — Brayden Point — Nikita Kucherov
Brandon Hagel — Anthony Cirelli — Jake Guentzel
Gage Goncalves — Nick Paul — Conor Geekie
Zemgus Girgensons — Luke Glendening
Victor Hedman — JJ Moser
Ryan McDonagh — Erik Cernak
Emil Lilleberg — Nick Perbix
Darren Raddysh
Andrei Vasilevskiy
Jonas Johansson
Scratched: Mitchell Chaffee
Injured: Oliver Bjorkstrand (lower body)
Panthers projected lineup
Carter Verhaeghe — Aleksander Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Mackie Samoskevich — Sam Bennett — Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Brad Marchand
Evan Rodrigues — Nico Sturm — Jesper Boqvist
Gustav Forsling – Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola — Dmitry Kulikov
Uvis Balinskis — Nate Schmidt
Sergei Bobrovsky
Vitek Vanecek
Scratched: Rasmus Asplund, Jonah Gadjovich, A.J. Greer, Tomas Nosek, Matt Kiersted, Jaycob Megna
Injured: None
Suspended: Aaron Ekblad
NHL.com independent correspondents Corey Long and George Richards contributed to this report
