{"id":145411,"date":"2026-02-05T23:48:50","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T23:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/145411\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T23:48:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T23:48:50","slug":"gameday-57-florida-panthers-at-tampa-bay-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/145411\/","title":{"rendered":"Gameday 57: Florida Panthers at Tampa Bay Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/imageedit_1_7281761681.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Graphic design: Todd Little &amp; Francisco Oporta<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The Florida Panthers (29-24-3) and Tampa Bay Lightning (36-14-4) will tussle for the final time this regular season at Benchmark International Arena in the last night of NHL action before the three-week break for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Florida blew a two-goal third period lead, but still managed to end its four-game losing streak with a nail-biting 5-4 shootout win over the Boston Bruins last night. Anton Lundell (1G\/2A), Matthew Tkachuk (1G\/1A) and Uvis Balinskis (1G\/1A) had multi-point games and Eetu Luostarinen opened the scoring with an unassisted goal. Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 25 shots, including 12 of the high-danger variety, to collect his 450th NHL win. The Cats have recalled defenseman Mikulas Hovorka from Charlotte.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The Lightning followed up its thrilling 6-5 shootout win over the Bruins in Sunday\u2019s Stadium Series clash with a hard-fought 4-3 overtime win over the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday. Nikita Kucherov, Oliver Bjorkstrand and Darren Raddysh scored in regulation and Jake Guentzel bagged the game-winner with 15 seconds left in the extra stanza. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 23 saves to help the red-hot Bolts stay atop the Eastern Conference standings.<\/p>\n<p>WHEN:\u00a07 p.m. ET<\/p>\n<p>WHERE: Benchmark International Arena \u2013 Tampa, FL<\/p>\n<p>ON THE TUBE:\u00a0ESPN+, Hulu<\/p>\n<p>ON THE DIAL:\u00a0104.3 WQAM (D\/B), 106.3 ESPN (PB), Thunder 100.3 (Keys)<\/p>\n<p>SOCIALS:\u00a0#TimeToHunt, #GoBolts, #FLAvsTBL,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LitterBoxCats\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">@LitterBoxCats<\/a>, LBC\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LitterBoxCats\/?ref=mf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">FaceBook<\/a><\/p>\n<p>ENEMY INTEL:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rawcharge.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Raw Charge<\/a><\/p>\n<p>FLA IN SEASON SERIES:\u00a0Game 4 of 4 (1-2)<\/p>\n<p>LAST MEETING:\u00a0TBL 4, @FLA 2 (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.litterboxcats.com\/florida-panthers-tampa-bay-lightning-recap-kucherov-luostarinen-marchand-holmberg-guentzel-nhl\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Recap<\/a>) \u2013 12\/27\/2025<\/p>\n<p>NEXT MEETING:\u00a0Playoffs or 2026-27 regular season<\/p>\n<p>PROJECTED STARTERS:\u00a0Florida: Tarasov (8-7-2 .904 \/ 2.67 0SO) Tampa Bay: Vasilevskiy (26-7-3 .918 \/ 2.14 1SO)<\/p>\n<p>PLAYER STATS:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/panthers\/stats\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Florida<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/lightning\/stats\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Tampa Bay<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Thursday in the Atlantic (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/standings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Standings<\/a>\/Panthers\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/moneypuck.com\/predictions.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Playoff Chances<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Pittsburgh (28-15-12 68P) at BUFFALO (32-18-6 70P) 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>OTTAWA (27-22-7 61P) at Philadelphia (25-20-10 60P) 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Idle: MON (72P), DET (72P), BOS (69P), TOR (63P)<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Graphic design: Todd Little &amp; Francisco Oporta The Florida Panthers (29-24-3) and Tampa Bay Lightning (36-14-4) will tussle&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-145411","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\/145411","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=145411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}