Panthers can close out Eastern 1st Round in Game 5 with Battle of Florida at new heights

Legendary hockey reporter Stan Fischler writes a weekly scrapbook for NHL.com. Fischler, known as "The Hockey Maven," shares his humor and insight with readers each Wednesday. This week zeroes in on the Eastern Conference First Round between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers while recalling the birth of each franchise and how each grew to energize hockey's popularity in the Sunshine State.

The Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning are rivals, and that's a good thing.

All you have to do is ask Panthers forward Brad Marchand, who learned about the Battle of Florida after he was acquired from the Boston Bruins before the NHL Trade Deadline on March 7.

"The rivalry is very emotional," Marchand said. "We just hate them more and more every time we play them. When the series started, I could feel the emotion the minute I walked into our room."

The Panthers lead the best-of-7 Eastern Conference First Round 3-1 with Game 5 at Amalie Arena on Wednesday (7:30 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, SCRIPPS, ESPN2, TVAS2, SN360), the defending Stanley Cup champions one win from advancing after Aaron Ekblad and Seth Jones scored 11 seconds apart late in the third period to spark a 4-2 victory in Game 4 on Monday.

On the ropes, the Lightning must win at home without forward Brandon Hagel, a 35-goal scorer ruled out for Game 5 after he was hit along the boards by Ekblad at 11:26 of the second period in Game 4.

Ekblad was suspended two games for elbowing by the NHL Department of Player Safety on Tuesday. His suspension will begin in Game 5.

"It's definitely kind of a tough spot being down 3-1," Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak said Tuesday. "We'd rather be on the opposite side of that, but it's hockey and that's why people love it. We know we have a great group of guys here. We know how to play, and I think we have a really good hockey team. As I said earlier, we have to focus game by game. It's a long series, nothing is done."

More than 19,000 fans will exercise their vocal cords in the latest chapter of a rivalry that never could have been imagined 33 years ago when the NHL planted teams in Miami and St. Petersburg, Florida.

"These two teams have grown to the point where each is a Stanley Cup contender," said Larry Hirsch, the Lightning's original radio voice. "The Lightning have won three championships (2004, '20, '21) and now the Panthers are defending their title. This year, they ran neck and neck down the homestretch."

Each team won 47 games and Tampa Bay finished second in the Atlantic Division with 102 points, four ahead of Florida and six behind the first-place Toronto Maple Leafs.

"It would be hard for any two rivals to get much closer than that," Hirsch said, "which is another reason why this rivalry is so keen."

Sam Reinhart led the Panthers with 39 goals and 81 points. His four points (one goal, three assists) in the series are tied with captain Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett, who with Carter Verhaeghe and Evan Rodrigues comprise one of the League's best forward units.

Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov led the NHL with 121 points (37 goals, 84 assists) in 78 games and has four assists in the series, one season after finishing with a League-best 144 points (44 goals, 100 assists). Tampa Bay has scored nine goals in the four games and a power play that ranked fifth (25.9 percent) in the regular season is 1-for-15 (6.7 percent) in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

"The Lightning's scoring revolves around Kucherov," said Erik Erlendsson, author of "Lightning Strikes" and creator of the Lightning Insider website. "He also quarterbacks the power play."

Both teams have come a long way from uncertain beginnings. Tampa emerged as a potential NHL city in 1991, when Hockey Hall of Famer Phil Esposito found a backer in a consortium of Japanese businesses headed by golf course and resort operator Kokusai Green.

"I was convinced that if I got people to the rink and they saw this great game, we'd get them," Esposito said.

He did. The Lightning filled the cramped 11,000-seat Expo Hall on the Florida State Fairgrounds in their inaugural season of 1992-93. A year later, they played at the Florida Suncoast Dome, a mammoth stadium renamed the ThunderDome, becoming Tropicana Field on Oct 4, 1996, and hosting the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays of Major League Baseball beginning with the 1998 season.

The Lightning drew a then NHL record 28,183 fans to the ThunderDome for Game 3 of the 1996 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, a 5-4 overtime win against the Philadelphia Flyers that gave them a 2-1 lead in a series they'd lose in six to end their first postseason appearance.

"That," Hirsch said, "was the turning point that proved hockey could sell here in Florida. The opening of the current building, Amalie Arena, in 1996 was the clincher."

The Panthers and president Bill Torrey, general manager of the New York Islanders teams that won the Stanley Cup from 1980-83, also had to cultivate a fan base.

"For starters," Torrey once recalled, "I took goalie John Vanbiesbrouck and six other players down for a week in August. It was 99 degrees, and they were in the streets stickhandling and promoting the game."

During their maiden season (1993-94), the Panthers played in the 14,500-seat Miami Arena and remained there until 1998, when the current 19,250-seat Amerant Bank Arena opened in suburban Sunrise. Panthersmania crested in 2022-23, the season after the Panthers won the Presidents' Trophy. It started with the trade that sent Jonathan Huberdeau to the Calgary Flames for Tkachuk on July 22, 2022.

"I couldn't believe we were going to play hockey in a place that had beaches and sunshine all the time," said Bill Lindsay, an original member of the Panthers and today their radio analyst. "We were told we were there to both play hockey and grow the game, so we signed autographs every day after practice and integrated ourselves in the community.

"We built a brand and could tell that hockey could work in Florida. It was amazing to see how quickly people were getting interested in the Panthers."

One example is Washington Capitals defenseman Jakob Chychrun, son of retired NHL defenseman Jeff Chychrun and a native of Boca Raton, Florida. He and Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere (Pembroke Pines) learned their hockey on local rinks.

"Having the two NHL teams here stimulated the kids' interest," Jeff Chychrun told me. "Also, the growth of skating rinks, where youngsters like Jakob could develop their skills, made a difference. Pretty soon more Floridians will graduate to 'The Show' just as Jakob did."

It's also possible that the 2024-25 Stanley Cup champions will be from the Sunshine State. Either Tampa Bay or Florida has represented the East in the Stanley Cup Final the past four years.

"Hey," Hirsch said, "the Panthers and Lightning did it before and one of them might just do it again."

NHL.com independent correspondent Corey Long contributed to this report