Lightning shut down Panthers in 1st meeting of the regular season

Eduardo A. Encina, Tampa Bay Times on Nov 15, 2025

Published in Hockey

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

SUNRISE, Fla. — This wasn’t late-April, and there were plenty of scattered empty seats at Amerant Bank Arena for the first regular-season meeting between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers on Saturday night. Not to mention, a lot of the usual suspects were missing.

Those anticipating another slugfest between the cross-state rivals might have been disappointed, but emerging from the night with a win was still important for both teams as they sit in the bottom half of the Eastern Conference standings nearly six weeks into the season.

Big brother certainly was watching from above, as NHL Director of Player Safety George Parros attended Saturday’s game. Both teams mostly behaved, especially compared to past meetings, and it definitely could be argued that the officials were more quick to blow their whistles.

Injuries to several key Lightning players — including Victor Hedman, Anthony Cirelli, Brandon Hagel and Ryan McDonagh — left the Tampa Bay lineup depleted of some of its star power, while giving those who haven’t gotten much ice time a chance to star.

And rookie center Jack Finley, who had played in just five of the Lightning’s first 16 games, emerged as the hero, his first NHL goal the game-winner in a 3-1 Tampa Bay victory.

The Lightning had one of their best defensive efforts of the season, holding the Panthers to just eight 5-on-5 shots on goal through the game’s midway point.

Defenseman Emil Lilleberg opened scoring with 7:41 left in the first period, taking a Nikita Kucherov feed following an offensive-zone faceoff win and wristing a shot from the left dot past Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky.

The Lightning put themselves in trouble in the second period with penalties, and Brad Marchand made them pay with his tying power-play goal five seconds after the Lightning’s Zemgus Girgensons was whistled for a charging penalty.

Outside of that, the Lightning penalty kill saved the day, including killing off a four-minute double-minor on defenseman Erik Cernak in the third period.

In the second-to-last preseason game, Panthers forward A.J. Greer initiated the latest chapter of bad blood between the teams with his sucker punches that knocked Hagel out of that game.

Scott Sabourin — who went after Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad (whose elbow to the head knocked Hagel out of last season’s playoff series) in the final preseason game — continuously challenged Panthers forward A.J. Greer to fight before faceoffs, but Greer kept shaking his head no.

Sabourin had to settle for the secondary assist on Finley’s goal, the second game in which the Lightning’s fourth line of Sabourin, Finley and Curtis Douglas has scored.

Girgensons emptied out Amerant Bank Arena with an empty-net goal with 50.3 seconds left in the game.

____