TAMPA, Fla.— You just knew the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers couldn’t play nice for too long.

Most of the teams’ second regular-season meeting was rather mild-mannered, though the Lightning were slow to get into the game, falling behind by four goals.

But Tampa Bay rallied in the third period with J.J. Moser making it a two-goal game. Florida’s unsuccessful challenge for goaltender interference gave the Lightning a power play with surging momentum at the 2:11 mark.

On that power play, Jake Guenzel found himself alone with the puck along the right post, but Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky closed off the post. As he tried to push a rebound in, Panthers defenseman Niko Mikkola ran his left forearm into Guentzel’s head.

That set off the mild-mannered Guentzel, as he came up swinging at Mikkola, who has 7 inches and 28 pounds on him, for Guentzel’s first fight of his 10-year NHL career.

There was no penalty on the Mikkola hit, with both players receiving matching fighting majors and spending the first minutes jawing at each other across the boxes.

Minutes later, Florida defenseman Seth Jones came at Brandon Hagel with his elbow up as Hagel crossed the blue line with the puck, hitting him with a shot to the head area that sent Hagel down the tunnel. Again, without a whistle.

No, the bad blood is not over.

The Lightning lost 5-2, unable to dig themselves out of their early hole, a defeat that was determined more by the odd man rushes they allowed than any holes in the officiating.

The Lightning fell into a two-goal deficit against the Panthers just three minutes, 48 seconds into the game at Benchmark International Arena and couldn’t claw their way out against a tenacious Florida forecheck.

The Lightning (18-12-3) are just 2-5-1 in their last eight games and have lost three straight at home.

An increased workload might be catching up with Lightning goaltender Jonas Johansson, who made his seventh straight start over 12 days filling in for injured starter Andrei Vasilevskiy. The Panthers scored twice on their first three shots, and Johansson has allowed 10 goals in the past three games after yielding just three in the previous three.

Lightning defenseman Max Crozier scored his first NHL goal with 33 seconds remaining in the second period on a shot from the right point that got through traffic and past Bobrovsky. Then Moser’s goal came from the top of the left circle.

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