Tampa Bay’s Tim Taylor and Florida’s Sean Hill clash against the boards during a 1993 meeting between the two teams.
Photo courtesy of Dan McDuffie | St. Petersburg Times (now known as Tampa Bay Times) (1993)
By Irena Mesa
To say the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers hate each other is an understatement of the Shakespearean-level feud between the hockey teams.
That feud started well before the teams even took to the ice, as Tampa’s fans already despised Wayne Huizenga, the Miami-based businessman and Panthers founder who was blamed for the Bay Area’s struggle to receive an MLB franchise.
In 1991, Huizenga bought the naming rights originally used by Frank Morsani, who was a leader in the effort to bring baseball to Tampa. In 1992, Huizenga received an NHL expansion franchise for Miami, and in 1993, he announced that the team would be using those same name rights bought two years prior— the Florida Panthers.
A few miles north in Tampa, the Lightning were ready to face off against their neighbors. After receiving a franchise in 1990, Lightning founder Phil Esposito was fanning the flames of a potential rivalry between the teams.
“It’s going to be great for us bringing a team to Miami because now we’re getting somebody our fans can really hate,” Esposito said in a Sun Sentinel article from 1995 after the South Florida expansion team was announced. “I can’t wait for them to get started.”
Lightning coach Terry Crisp also had a few choice words for the Panthers, calling them “kittycats.” Esposito also allegedly said he couldn’t wait to “beat the hell out of [the Panthers].”
Bob Clarke, Florida’s general manager, didn’t take kindly to those comments and turned Esposito’s own words against him by calling him a kittycat. Later, he also called out Esposito’s own style of play during his time in the NHL.
In response, Esposito went up to Clarke and kissed him on the cheek during a televised interview with a quick, “Love you, Clarkie.”
The players, on the other hand, didn’t seem as interested in the rivalry between the management of their respective teams.
“We’ve heard a few things about there being a rivalry between us and the Panthers, but we aren’t really looking at it like that,” Lightning player John Tucker said in a Tampa Tribune article from 1993. “We want to beat them, sure. But it’s no different than if we were playing some other team.”
All such comments were made before their first-ever meeting in the preseason, which was played in September of 1993 in Lakeland in front of a crowd of 3,876 people. The Lightning won that meeting 4-3, and there was only one anti-Panthers poster in sight.
Their first regular-season meeting was played a month later at the Thunderdome, which was the temporary home of the Tampa Bay Lightning, and is now known as Tropicana Field. 27,227 fans filled the stands for the 2-0 loss to the Panthers.
Roger Neilson, the first coach of the Florida Panthers, felt that the vitriol was one-sided.
“I think the Tampons, or whatever you call them, that they dislike Miami a lot more than Miami dislikes them,” he said in a Sun Sentinel article from 1995. “It may be a big rivalry, but it hasn’t built up for us yet.”
And it sure did build up. The rivalry between the teams is regarded as one of the fiercest in the entire league.
The relationship between them simmered down as both teams fluctuated between periods of success and struggle.
Some years the Lightning won the regular season series, while other years the Panthers had it on lock. However, the Lightning beat the Panthers to the NHL’s highest honor —winning the Stanley Cup — in 2004.
In more recent history, things truly turned sour after they faced off in the playoffs for the first time in 2021.
That first-round series was the ignition to what the rivalry is today, characterized by plenty of hard hits and close-scoring affairs. The Lightning won the series four games to two and went on to win their third Stanley Cup, making it back-to-back years as champions.
The following year, they met again, but this time in the second round. The Lightning stormed past the Panthers in a four-game sweep, which made them the first team since the New York Islanders of the early 1980s to win 10 straight playoff series.
In 2024, the Panthers were out for revenge, taking the first-round series against the Bolts four games to one. That year, the Panthers went on to win their first Stanley Cup.
The Panthers kept their playoff success against the Lightning going in 2025, where they took the first-round series four games to one, and went on to win their second Stanley Cup.
Despite the lopsided final, it wasn’t without its controversies.
In game 2, Lightning forward Brandon Hagel handed out a heavy hit to Florida captain Aleksander Barkov, who left the game. After reviewing the hit, Hagel was given a five-minute penalty and no further punishment.
The following game, Hagel was hit by Florida forward Aaron Ekblad, and Hagel left the game with a concussion. No penalties were assessed on the play, but both teams kept the lack of retribution in mind when they met in September for their first preseason game.
Both teams took the preseason matches as an opportunity for retribution for the hits given and received in the playoff series.
On Oct. 2, there was a grand total of 49 penalties, which factored out to 186 penalty minutes, which is just six minutes longer than the usual 180 minutes for an entire hockey game. The Lightning won the game 5-2.
Just two days later, both teams built upon the numbers tallied in the game prior, with 36 penalties and 182 penalty minutes for the Lightning, and 29 penalties and 140 penalty minutes for the Panthers. The score was irrelevant — and even had to be corrected after a Florida Panther who didn’t realize he had been ejected had scored late in the game.
As a result, the NHL suspended Lightning forward Scott Sabourin for four games and Lightning defenseman J.J. Moser for two games.
That wasn’t all, as the team received a $100,000 fine, and head coach Jon Cooper was given one for $25,000.
After the heavy-handed punishments in the preseason, the Lightning and Panthers kept things civil when they met on Nov. 15 for a game the Lightning took 3-1.
Then, eyes were on Benchmark International Arena for the next chapter in this storied rivalry, and after the Lightning’s Monday loss to the Panthers, the season series is split 1-1. They meet again in Sunrise on Dec. 27
