The final result for the Tampa Bay Lightning was never in doubt on Thursday night against the other team from Florida at Benchmark International Arena.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay defeated their in-state rival Florida Panthers 6-1 in the final game before the 2026 Winter Olympics behind six goals from Olympians and 33 saves from goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy.<\/p>\n
Brandon Hagel, Zemgus Girgensons, Jake Guentzel, Erik Cernak, Pontus Holmberg and Oliver Bjorkstrand had the goals for Tampa Bay, which improved to 37-14-4 this season.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay enters the Olympic break 19-1-1 in its last 21 games and will resume NHL play on Wednesday, Feb. 25 at home against the Toronto Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n
Scoring summary<\/p>\n
First period<\/p>\n
TBL 1, FLA 0<\/p>\n
2:08 Brandon Hagel (27) – Victor Hedman<\/p>\n
The Lightning snagged the early lead with Brandon Hagel\u2019s redirection of Victor Hedman\u2019s shot from the point.<\/p>\n
TBL 2, FLA 0<\/p>\n
14:08 Zemgus Girgensons (7) – Pontus Holmberg, Yanni Gourde<\/p>\n
Zemgus Girgensons doubled the home team\u2019s advantage when he corralled the puck in front of the Florida net and fired a shot through the leg pads of Florida goalie Daniil Tarasov.<\/p>\n
Shots on goal: FLA 19, TBL 7<\/p>\n
Second period<\/p>\n
TBL 3, FLA 0<\/p>\n
1:14 Jake Guentzel (26) – Darren Raddysh, Nikita Kucherov – PP<\/p>\n
The Lightning took advantage of their first power-play chance in the game to open the second period, making it 3-0 on a Jake Guentzel rebound goal near the right post.<\/p>\n
TBL 4, FLA 0<\/p>\n
17:50 Erik Cernak (1) – Ryan McDonagh, Dominic James<\/p>\n
Defenseman Erik Cernak extended the lead late in the second with his wraparound goal late in the middle frame.<\/p>\n
Shots on goal: TBL 11, FLA 9<\/p>\n
Third period<\/p>\n
TBL 5, FLA 0<\/p>\n
6:09 Pontus Holmberg (9) – Goncalves, Oliver Bjorkstrand – PP<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay got another power-play goal on a 5-on-3 chance after Florida coach Paul Maurice was ejected. Pontus Holmberg deposited his chance in front of the net, winning a battle to the puck.<\/p>\n
TBL 5, FLA 1<\/p>\n
9:50 Mackie Samoskevich (6) – Jesper Boqvist, Anton Lundell – PP<\/p>\n
Florida broke into the scoring with a power-play shot midway through the third period.<\/p>\n
TBL 6, FLA 1<\/p>\n
15:41 Oliver Bjorkstrand (10) – Unassisted<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay closed the scoring after a Florida turnover, this goal coming on an Oliver Bjorkstrand shot from the circle.<\/p>\n
Total shots: FLA 34, TBL 28<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final result for the Tampa Bay Lightning was never in doubt on Thursday night against the other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-145647","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\/145647","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=145647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}