Stanley Cup Playoffs Round 1 Preview: Lightning vs. Panthers

To get a sense of just how pivotal the first-round bout between the Atlantic Division’s second- and third-best squads could be, consider this: for the past half-decade, the road to the Stanley Cup has run through Florida.

Five straight Cup Finals, five straight appearances from either the Florida Panthers or the Tampa Bay Lightning. The last time the post-season’s final round didn’t feature one of the two Floridian squads, Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ was still lighting up the Billboard Hot 100. Avengers: Endgame was just touching down in theatres. So, while we’ve seen plenty of it over the past few years, recent history suggests the stakes remain sky high for the 2025 iteration of the Sunshine State’s rivalry round.

Of course, much has changed over the course of those five years of Floridian Cup-hunting. After three straight seasons of watching the Bolts march to the Final — two of which ended in banners and rings for Victor Hedman and Co. — the Panthers grabbed the wheel and took over in 2023, authoring two Cup Final runs of their own. Now, after reaching the summit in 2024, they head into the 2025 playoffs not as an underdog, not as a hopeful, but as the defending champs.

But the paths the two clubs have taken this season suggests another reversal might be coming.

In the wake of their championship run, the Panthers have been on a rollercoaster. Free agency plucked a few key names off the roster, injuries claimed a couple more, and other unforeseen plot twists — like the PED violation that earned Aaron Ekblad a 20-game ban — sapped even more stability from the campaign. The result is a Panthers squad that doesn’t seem to be rolling quite as smoothly as the one that lifted the Cup last June. Still, the key leaders are all wearing Panthers colours, and they know the real games begin next week.

And then there’s the Bolts. The fall from grace seemed swift for the perennial finalists, Tampa Bay losing the 2022 Cup to Colorado and then getting bounced in the first round in each of the next two years, each time by a club they’d previously walked over. Then came some tough decisions, none more ruthless than the organization moving on from longtime captain Steven Stamkos. Brutal as their rapid retool might’ve been, the Bolts now find themselves back among the league’s elite after a brief spell in the wild-card race.

With no shortage of big-game experience between the two clubs and their all-world leaders, which Floridian outfit books a ticket to the second round, and perhaps beyond?

Head-to-head record

Panthers: 2-2-0

Lightning: 2-2-0

The breakdown

The Cats are going to have their hands full with this version of the Lightning. After a middling 2023-24, the Bolts have returned to their former place as one of the league’s most dangerous outfits — they enter the post-season with the NHL’s most prolific offence, and they’ve been no less elite on the defensive side, namely due to their future Hall of Fame netminder rediscovering his elite form.

The Panthers’ regular season has been more a mixed bag. They finished middle-of-the-pack offensively and were a top-10 club defensively, but the numbers don’t tell us all that much about what this group really is. Much of their regular season was navigated without vital members of their squad in the lineup. And after two straight trips to the Final, this Florida core needs no lessons about what’s required when regular-season hockey gives way to the playoff grind. Paul Maurice’s side has cemented their identity over the course of the past two years, and regardless of their regular-season performance, you wonder if they’ll show up in Game 1 as that familiar, relentless behemoth from last year’s Cup run.

If there is a thorn in the side of Florida’s hopes of going back-to-back, it might simply be health. As dangerous as the Cats are, they aren’t the same club without Matthew Tkachuk doing what he does best. The 27-year-old has suggested he expects to be back for Game 1 of the first round — still, he hasn’t suited up for his club since early February. How he looks upon his return, how quickly he can get back up to speed, and whether he can get the Panthers offence rolling at the level it’s shown over the past few post-seasons will be crucial.

Tampa Bay is in the opposite boat. They head into Round 1 with a devastatingly deep group — Nikita Kucherov is fresh off his second straight Art Ross-winning campaign, Brayden Point has turned in another elite season beside him, Jake Guentzel has put up perhaps his finest season in his first turn as a Bolt, Brandon Hagel has evolved from quality depth piece to elite scorer, and Victor Hedman has risen back to fringes of the Norris conversation at 34 years old. 

But the most important performance from any member of the Lightning this season undoubtedly came from the man in the cage. After putting up some of the worst numbers of his career in 2023-24, Andre Vasilevskiy bounced back with a vintage effort in 2024-25, his .921 save percentage the best he’s posted in four years, and the third-best mark he’s ever put up. 

Florida has its own quality veteran in the cage, of course, and both Vasilevskiy and Sergei Bobrovsky have proven able to come up with a game-changing, series-altering moment when it’s needed most. With all the firepower housed in each lineup, it might just come down to which netminder outshines the other.

Advanced stats
(5-on-5 totals from Natural Stat Trick)

Regular season team stats

Panthers X-Factor: Brad Marchand

The Cats’ playoff run will go as its leaders go, with marquee performances needed from the likes of Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, and Bobrovsky to get past these Bolts. But GM Bill Zito threw another wild card into the mix at the deadline with the acquisition of veteran Brad Marchand.

Beyond their ability to do all the things you need to win hockey games — put pucks in the net, make key saves, limit the opposition, etc. — a not-insignificant part of the Panthers’ success comes from all those undefinable aspects of a winning team. They’re physical, and relentless, and irritating, supplementing quality offensive and defensive performances with an ability to simply frustrate the opposition into submission.

Marchand seems to represent that identity to a tee. At 36 years old, he likely isn’t impacting a game the way he did a few years ago, in the prime of his Bruins tenure, but the Nova Scotian wrecking ball can still cause plenty of havoc out on the sheet. That’s tough news for the Lightning, who now have to contend with Tkachuk, Marchand and Sam Bennett all flying at them, and through them, while trying to play a hockey game. 

How exactly the lines shake out when No. 19 returns to the fold for Florida remains to be seen, but the prospect of Marchand lining up alongside either Tkachuk or Bennett should make this opening-round bout appointment viewing.

Lightning X-Factor: Brandon Hagel

Lost amid the second straight year of offensive dominance from Kucherov, the sterling debut from Guentzel and the crucial bounce-back from Vasilevskiy was the impressive evolution of Hagel this season.

The Saskatoon product has been incredible since joining the Bolts a few years back, steadily improving year over year, culminating in a couple seasons hovering around the 30-goal, 70-point mark. Then came 2024-25. As Tampa Bay returned to dominant form, Hagel amassed a career-best 35 goals and 90 points this season — ranking him, not Point or Guentzel, as the Lightning’s second-highest scorer. Key to Hagel’s impact is how exactly he stacks those totals — 72 of the winger’s 90 points have come at even-strength, ranking him fifth-best across the NHL on that front. The same goes for his goal-scoring, with 32 of his tallies coming at even-strength, also the fifth-most league-wide.

It’s not just the fact that Hagel has unleashed the full weight of his offensive skill-set, though, or that he can do it without the aid of special-teams play — it’s everything he brings to the table alongside that production. The 26-year-old put it all on display earlier this year, while repping his country at the 4 Nations Face-Off. Among the high-flying offensive juggernauts dotted throughout Canada’s roster, it was Hagel who stood out as a key factor game after game, the winger pushing his countrymen forward with his fervent forechecking, penchant for winning races, and willingness to dig in on any battle. 

There’s no doubt that aspect of Hagel’s game will be key amid the chaos of this opening-round tilt — and it’ll be particularly pivotal against the likes of the Panthers agitators mentioned above.

Broadcast Details

Game 1: Monday, April 21, 10 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. MT (Sportsnet)
Game 2: Wednesday, April 23, 10 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. MT (Sportsnet, CBC)
Game 3: Friday, April 25, 10 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. MT (Sportsnet, CBC)
Game 4: Sunday, April 27, 9:30 p.m. ET / 7:30 p.m. MT (Sportsnet, CBC)
* Game 5: Tuesday, April 29, Time TBD
* Game 6: Thursday, May 1, Time TBD
* Game 7: Saturday, May 3, Time TBD
* if necessary

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