TAMPA, Fla. — The Florida Panthers aren’t taking part in these Stanley Cup playoffs. Their impact is still being felt.
To a man, the Tampa Bay Lightning were irritated in the manner in which they got pushed around last spring by their in-state rivals. That greatly impacted their collective mindset entering this season.
“It seemed like we were, I don’t want to say scared, but it seemed like we were the smaller guy on the ice,” Tampa winger Brandon Hagel said on the eve of the playoffs. “I think we’ve done a good job throughout this season showing that we’re not that team. I’m not saying we’re the toughest team in the league, but I always say that we have 25 guys that’ll leave this rink with a black eye. When you have 25 of those guys in your dressing room you’re probably in a good spot.”
They brawled with Florida in preseason and then dropped ‘em all season long against whatever team got in their face.
They’re the new bad boys of the NHL. You thought Sam Bennett and Brad Marchand and those grinding Cup champs in South Florida were annoying?
The Bully Bolts have raised it up to a whole new level.
“I think somebody’s got to be the villain, I guess, and we’re OK with it,” Tampa head coach Jon Cooper said following his team’s 3-2 overtime win Tuesday night to tie its first-round series with the Montreal Canadiens at one game apiece. “The guys play hard, and they’re a determined group. When there’s obstacles in their way, they’ll get try and get through it any way possible. And if it’s fighting their way through it then so be it. That’s what happens. But it’s served us well.”
From the moment Scott Sabourin was inserted into the lineup for Game 2, there was no secret to Tampa Bay’s agenda. The Lightning wanted their pound of flesh from the Canadiens. A wild first-period melee left the ice surface covered in gloves and Hagel, after his altercation with Josh Anderson, pumping up the crowd on the way to the penalty box, mocking Anderson with crocodile tears.
Pure bedlam.
“Everyone in the room knows we’re good when we play with emotion,’’ Hagel said after the game. “Not just myself, but guys are willing to bring everyone in the fight and that was what I was trying to do a little bit. Obviously it worked. We were able to get the win. But it’s a good team over there. It’s going to be like this the entire series. I’m excited to get to Montreal.”
Corey Perry, who fought Alex Carrier on Tuesday night, played in consecutive Stanley Cup finals for the Edmonton Oilers against the Panthers the last two years. He knows how the Lightning probably felt a year ago. And he certainly sees the parallels with Tampa Bay taking on a bit of the Panthers’ bad boys persona.
“There’s a little similarity for sure,’’ Perry said after the game Tuesday night. “Different systems but the same mindset. We’re a team that we’re not going to be pushed around. But when we are emotional and when we are engaged, you see what we can do. It’s pretty incredible. When times get going and things like that get going, it’s fun. Damn, it’s a good feeling when you win.”
Perry’s eyes widened as he said that. You could tell how much fun he truly got out of this wild game, which included barking at Montreal players in the penalty box like only Perry would. He fits right in with this group in so many obvious ways.
Hagel, meanwhile, picked up a Gordie Howe hat trick Tuesday night. I mean, come on.
“I never really would have expected that, to be honest,” he smiled. “But yeah, it’s good. Obviously whatever it takes to win.”
Brandon Hagel contributed a Gordie Howe hat trick to the Lightning’s Game 2 win. (Mike Carlson / Getty Images)
Whatever it takes to win was what Florida believed in as well.
It simply makes sense that both Florida teams would rub off on each other. The Lightning were the forever standard in the East, winning back-to-back Cups in 2020 and 2021. The Panthers knew they had to raise their organization to those standards if they were going to be champions themselves.
In December 2024, six months after winning their first Stanley Cup, I asked Panthers GM Bill Zito about Tampa’s influence on his organization.
“Obviously my words are going to be colored by my relationship with a whole bunch of those guys, and I would say it’s absolutely colored with affinity and admiration,” Zito said at the time. “But I think I’m right: I still think they’re the gold standard.
“We talk about where we’re trying to get as a franchise, where we’re trying to get as a hockey operations, and they’re it,” Zito said. “Some of the things that they do, the consistency, year in and year out the play of their superstars, the way that they’ve been able to add those supplemental players along the way to their core and then to have the coaching staff utilize them and get the most of them … It’s impressive.”
Now on the other side of it, Tampa appears to have found grudging inspiration from their bitter rivals in return. So fascinating.
“Florida played Tampa Bay four times in five years,” Panthers head coach Paul Maurice told The Athletic via text message this week. “That’s where the intensity between teams is created. Regardless of style of play the frequency of playoff series drives the intensity up. Tampa and Montreal will have a very intense regular season next year because of this series.’’
Um, yeah.
But here’s the thing, the young Canadiens don’t appear too frazzled about it. They’ve played two solid road games in a hostile environment against a veteran team and didn’t flinch one bit at Tampa’s aggressive tactics Tuesday night. Maybe it’s what the Lightning needed to get themselves going, but it didn’t appear to intimidate the Habs.
“We can play whatever style, we’ve got a tight group in here,” Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki said. “Guys always want to be in those scrums and stick up for each other. We got power plays out of it. And we were able to score one. So I think we can use it against them at some point.”
That could very well be the case. The Lightning are walking a fine line, and frankly, are playing with fire to some degree, given how lethal that Habs power play is.
But this is who they are now. The Lightning changed their identity this season and they’re not going to back off of it.
“It was part of how we created our identity during the regular season and we are continuing the same way in the playoffs,” Tampa center Yanni Gourde said Tuesday night. “It’s important for us, that’s part of our identity now, to be physical, to not take anything from anyone.”
What’s so interesting, no matter how you feel about it, is that this is a very veteran team assuming a new look after years and years of consistent winning. The Florida series last year made the Lightning look in the mirror and ponder what ingredients were missing, especially because that series loss made it three straight first-round playoff exits. The same approach wasn’t good enough anymore.
Which goes to show you no matter how much winning a team has done for a decade-plus, the willingness to learn and adapt doesn’t go away.
“I think there’s always lessons to be learned,” Cooper said on the eve of the series. “You tell me when you’ve got life figured out, let me know, because that’ll be a best-selling book. To be honest, we have gone on such a run, at some point that run ends. And what I’m proud about this group is, yeah the run ended in the sense we haven’t gone on a playoff run, but we have gotten back to the dance each time. Two of those times we had to play the eventual Stanley Cup champions in the first round. So it hasn’t been easy to keep getting here. That’s why I have to give the guys a ton of credit.
“But in saying that, at some point you’re going to run out of at-bats. Listen, we ran into a buzzsaw for a little bit (back-to-back Florida series), and who knows, Montreal may be a team that maybe they beat us and go all the way to the Stanley Cup themselves. But I do think we’ve kind of taken from … we’ve learned along the way. So hopefully it helps us moving forward.”
The Bully Bolts aren’t making a lot of friends this season. But they don’t care what you think. They are comfortable with their new M.O.
Could it cost them against Montreal? Maybe. But either way, the rest of this series will be far from boring.