Battle of Florida: Bolts and Panthers Rivalry Grows Hotter Before Season Begins

The battle of Florida rivalry reached new levels this weekend as the Lightning took on the Panthers in Sunrise for the last preseason game of the 2025-26 season. A total of 498 penalty minutes and 14 game misconducts were handed out during the three preseason games that literally meant nothing. Yup, that's more fighting than hockey. So why are only the Lightning being punished?

Two Lightning players got hit with hefty fines - Carter Schmidt will pay $2,098.52 and Gage Goncalves $3,125 for cross-checking Panthers' Carter Verhaeghe and Evan Rodrigues. Officials suspended Scott Sabourin for four games after he punched Panthers' Aaron Ekblad with a bare fist. In another incident, J.J. Moser got a two-game suspension for a rough hit that sent Jesper Boqvist flying into the boards. Yet no hearings for Verhaeghe's similar play in that same game. The NHL also slapped Tampa Bay with a $100,000 fine. Head coach Jon Cooper has to pay an additional $25,000 for his team's behavior during their brutal 7-0 defeat.

Not to mention that Florida's defenseman Niko Mikkola should be facing an automatic 10-game suspension for continuing to play after being handed a 10-minute misconduct penalty which resulted in an ejection from the game. However there are crickets from the league on whether he will be facing any consequences.

The rivalry of these teams go back at least 5 years from heated back and forth playoff series wins. However, the recent drama started in retaliation to last year's playoff series where Brandon Hagel had a delayed hit on Alexander Barkov. Barkov did not miss a period in that series in comparison to Brandon Hagel, who was given a cheap shot to the head by Panthers enforcer Aaron Ekblad and ended up being out for the remainder of the series. Hagel came for revenge on the first meeting of these two teams on Thursday. That game ended with over 180 penalty minutes.

These penalty-heavy games were normal in hockey's rougher days, and even up to the early 2000s. Today's NHL rules have made these intense, penalty-filled matches pretty rare. We think unless the league decides to start handing out even punishments for both teams, we'll probably see heated battles like this again in the regular season. The two teams will play each other 4 times this year: at home on December 15 and February 5, 2026, and in Sunrise on November 15 and December 27.