Why the Tampa Bay Lightning will beat the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Playoffs

TAMPA — After decades of forced rivalries due to geographical proximity, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers no longer need gimmicks to call each other true rivals.

For the second consecutive postseason, the Sunshine State Showdown – or the Battle of Florida or the Sunscreen Series – will captivate not just hockey fans in the state of Florida, but perhaps the hockey community with higher stakes on the line this time around.

Last season the two teams squared off in the first round of a highly entertaining six-game series won by the Lightning, the first step on their journey to winning a second consecutive Stanley Cup title.

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“I think a lot of people in Florida want to see us play, I think, just because of last year, the rivalry that's been built,’’ Tampa Bay forward Alex Killorn said. “It's going to be a really exciting matchup.’’

Last season, the two teams saw each other 14 times between the regular season and the playoffs. Add in three preseason meetings this year plus four regular-season matchups, the two teams will meet for the 22nd time since January when the puck drops for Game 1 on Tuesday.

There is plenty of familiarity. But here are three reasons why the Tampa Bay Lightning quest for a three-peat will continue after this series:

The curse of the President's Trophy

The curse of the President’s Trophy winner lives on in recent years. And just like the Curse of the Bambino and the Curse of the Billy Goat, they are real. Kind of.

The Panthers enjoyed a franchise breaking season with 58 wins, 122 points, while averaging 4.1 goals per game, the first team to average more than four-goals-per-game for a full season since Pittsburgh in 1995-96.

The Curse doesn’t care. No team that won the President’s Trophy has gone on to win the Stanley Cup since the Chicago Blackhawks during the lockout shortened 2012-13 season. Before that, it was the Detroit Red Wings in 2007-08.

The Curse is something the Lightning are all too aware of as the only year they won the President’s Trophy in 2019, tying an NHL record with 62 wins in the regular season, Tampa Bay failed to win a playoff game and was swept by the Columbus Blue Jackets.

The last team that led the league in points during the regular season to even make it out of the second round was the 2014-15 New York Rangers, who needed an overtime victory in Game 7 against Washington to reach the Conference finals.

To take the curse one step further, since the President’s Trophy started to be handed out in 1985-86, there have been six teams to finish the season with at least 120 points. None of the previous five reached the Stanley Cup Final with only the Detroit Red Wings in 1995-96 getting out of the second round before losing to Colorado in the Western Conference finals. Detroit (2005-06), Washington (2009- 10) and Tampa Bay (2018-19) all lost in the first round while the Capitals lost in the second round in 2016.

The Curse is real. Kind of.

Lightning have more playoff experience

The Lightning have been among the league elite for the better part of the past eight years, qualifying for the playoffs in every year but one when they missed the postseason by one point in 2016-17.

Tampa Bay has appeared in three Stanley Cup Finals and five conference finals in that span. And every time the Lightning advanced out of the opening round of the playoffs, they’ve won at least two rounds.

They’ve experienced just about every imaginable playoff scenario in that span and they’ve learned how to win at this time of the year, having captured nine consecutive playoff series.

The 22 players currently on Tampa Bay’s roster combine for 1,704 career playoff games, an average of 77 games per player. Eight players have more than 100 games of playoff experience.

Florida has a combined 814 games of playoff experience, with 377 of those games belonging to Joe Thornton (184), Patric Hornqvist (102) and Claude Giroux (91).

Tampa Bay leaned on that experience in the opening round against Toronto after trailing in the series three separate times before rallying for an overtime win in Game 6 and going on the road to win Game 7 to reach the second round for the third consecutive postseason.

Nothing will rattle the Lightning in this series, not the crowd, not the opponent and not the thought of trying to become the first team since the New York Islanders from 1980-83 to win three consecutive Stanley Cup titles, a chase for legacy they embrace.

“We are in the history books, and we're going to go down as two-time champs and it's not like, people do that every day. It rarely happens,’’ Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “But to do three in a row, now you're becoming one of the best teams of the decade. It's really hard to have it within your grasp, let alone get it, and right now it's within our grasp and we're chasing it.’’

Vasilevskiy over Bobrovsky at goaltender

Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy won the 2021 Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP, posting a 16-7 record with 1.90 goals against average and .937 save percentage with five shutouts.

Vasilevskiy pitched a shutout in each of the team’s four series-clinching games, including in the opening round against the Panthers in Game 6.

When the stakes start to get higher, Vasilevskiy takes his game to a higher level. Though his numbers in the opening round against Toronto were not up to his lofty standards, allowing at least three goals in each of the first six games of the series, when it came to the deciding seventh game, he stopped 30-of-31 shots to lead Tampa Bay to a 2-1 victory.

Though his streak of five consecutive shutouts in series-clinching games came to an end – a streak of 333 consecutive minutes – he stopped all 17 shots he faced in the third period to preserve the lead.

Sergei Bobrovsky, while a two-time Vezina Trophy winner (one more than Vasilevskiy), has not had a great deal of success against Tampa Bay with 9-10-3 record with a 3.50 GAA and .882 save percentage.

And though his only playoff series win in his career did come against Tampa Bay while with Columbus in 2019, his .5.33 GAA and .841 save percentage in the series last year against the Lightning does not instill confidence in his chances going up against his fellow Russian at the other end of the ice.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: NHL playoffs 2022: Why Tampa Bay Lightning will beat Florida Panthers