The Florida Panthers got absolutely thrashed 6-1 by the Tampa Bay Lightning at Benchmark International Arena in the final night of action before the NHL shuts down for three weeks for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Italy.
Tampa Bay, clad in its Stadium Series kit, scored twice in each period with the goals going to Brandon Hagel, Zemgus Girgensons, Jake Guentzel, Erik Cernak, Pontus Holmberg and Oliver Bjorkstrand.
Guentzel’s goal came on the power play; Cernak’s marker was his first of the season; and Holmberg’s goal ended Daniil Tarasov’s night with 13:51 left in regulation. Tarasov left the game with a lower-body injury after stopping 20 of 25 shots faced in what was probaby his poorest outing as a Panther.
Usually snake-bitten Mackie Samoskevich broke up Andrei Vasilevskiy’s shutout bid at 9:50 of the third. Samsokevich took a crisp cross from Jesper Boqvist, loaded up and rang a shot of the iron and in from the right circle, It was just his second goal of 2026. The secondary helper on the power-play marker went to Anton Lundell.
The teams combined for a whopping 147 penalty minutes and 51 hits, with the Lightning holding a decided 34-17 edge in that department.
Matthew Tkachuk ignited a melee 4:06 into the final frame, when he hit Nikita Kucherov in the back during a stoppage in play, knocking him to the ice. Hagel took exception and started swinging (mostly missing) on Tkachuk. A “highlight” of the fracas was mild-mannered Gustav Forsling beating the tar out of J.J. Moser.
After a hard-fought and emotionally draining must-win over the Boston Bruins the night before, the depleted Panthers were simply no match for the red-hot Bolts in this one, looking every bit like Tampa Bay’s little brother again. Florida enters the Olympic break eight points behind the Bruins for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with only 25 games left on the schedule to make up that gap. A daunting road lies ahead. Hopefully, the Cats going to Milan come back healthy and reinforcements join the fray when the club returns to play on February 26, against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Sunrise.
Stat Card
- Mackie Samoskevich scored his first goal since January 25 to end a five-game drought. It was his sixt goal and third power-play marker of the campaign.
- Jesper Boqvist’s primary assist on the goal was his first point of the new year. The last time Boqvist got on the score sheet was on December 20. Boqvist has contributed eight points thus far.
- With his secondary helper, Anton Lundell became the fifth Panther to reach the 40-point plateau. That’s the third time that he’s hit that mark in five seasons in the league.
- Mikalus Hovorka made his NHL debut and had a rough go of it. The 24-year-old Czech went minus-three and was tagged with three giveaways in his 11:27 of ice time.
- Sergei Bobrovsky came on at 6:09 of the third and stopped two of the three shots he faced, yielding the game’s final goal to Oliver Bjorkstand after a Hovorka miscue.
