Here they go again: Lightning vs. Panthers in Round 1, for Sunshine State hockey supremacy

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Here they go again: Lightning vs. Panthers in Round 1, for Sunshine State hockey supremacy

2025-04-21 21:52 Last Updated At：22:03

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — It’s starting to feel like an annual tradition: Panthers vs. Lightning in the NHL playoffs, the battle of Florida, a matchup that has seemed to decide which team will eventually get to the Stanley Cup Final.

And here they go again.

Defending Stanley Cup champion Florida heads to Tampa Bay for Game 1 of an Eastern Conference first-round series Tuesday night, the start of the fourth postseason meeting in five years between the Sunshine State rivals. Tampa Bay won the East title in 2020, 2021 and 2022; Florida is trying to match that run of success after winning the East in 2023 and 2024.

“I think you see it every game we play, whether it’s preseason in Orlando or whether it’s Game 1 of the playoffs,” Panthers forward Sam Reinhart said. “We’ve kind of known that the other one’s going to be there at the end of the year. It’s kind of always, we’re going to have to go through each other. I think there’s that respect there … but we almost love to hate each other.”

Tampa Bay beat Florida 4-1 in 2021 (on its way to a second consecutive Stanley Cup title) and swept the Panthers in 2022 — giving up just three goals in that series. Florida beat Tampa Bay in six games last season, on its way to its first Cup win.

“They know us and we know them,” Lightning forward Brayden Point said. “We’re looking forward to it. They’re always tight series and it’s going to be a good one.”

Since the season resumed in February after the break for the 4 Nations Face-off event, Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy and Florida goalie Sergei Bobrovsky — both of them Stanley Cup winners — have looked playoff-sharp.

Vasilevskiy had a 1.89 goals-against average and .927 save percentage in that span. Bobrovsky had a 1.95 GAA and .914 save percentage. And both had three shutouts.

Bobrovsky backstopped Florida to the Cup last season.

“I don’t remember much from what happened last year,” Bobrovsky said. “It’s a new season, it’s a new challenge, it’s a new contest and we’re excited about it. We just want to enjoy that experience and we’re going to try our best to win it.”

A look at some stats in the Panthers-Lightning rivalry:

— Wins this season: Florida 47, Tampa Bay 47.

— Head-to-head wins this season: Florida 2, Tampa Bay 2.

— Wins in last 20 meetings (including playoffs): Florida 10, Tampa Bay 10.

— Goals, last 40 meetings (including playoffs): Florida 128, Tampa Bay 128.

— Goals, last 145 meetings (including playoffs): Florida 454, Tampa Bay 454.

— Record in last 168 head-to-head meetings (including playoffs): Florida 80 wins, Tampa Bay 80 wins, with eight ties.

The state of Florida has had a team in the Stanley Cup final in each of the last five years.

If the Lightning-Panthers winner gets there again this year, it'll mark the longest stretch of one state or province making it to consecutive title rounds since Alberta — Edmonton six times, Calgary twice — had a team there in eight straight seasons from 1983 through 1990.

No U.S. state has made it to the title round in six straight years since New York saw the Rangers get there in 1979 and the Islanders in each of the following five seasons.

Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper has won 87 playoff games with the Lightning, the third-most of any coach with one franchise in NHL history.

He won’t be catching Al Arbour anytime soon; Arbour won 119 with the New York Islanders for the most by any coach with one club. But Cooper enters this series just two wins behind Glen Sather, who won 89 with Edmonton.

“There’s 32 teams. There’s only 16 left. We’re one of the 16,” Cooper said. “I think every year, we get looked at as, ‘OK, their time’s over.’ And every year, these guys come back and prove they can do it. It’s been amazing to be part of for more than a decade.”

Tampa Bay's Nikita Kucherov won the scoring title this season with 121 points, his second consecutive year finishing No. 1 on that list and his third consecutive 100-point season. That's the good news.

Here's the bad news.

No scoring champion has played for that season's eventual Stanley Cup champion since Evgeni Malkin with Pittsburgh in 2008-09. And only four players in the last 25 years have tallied 100 or more points, then gone on to win that year's Cup: Malkin and Sidney Crosby in 2009, Carolina's Eric Staal in 2006 and Colorado's Joe Sakic in 2001.

AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Hennepin County prosecutor calls on the public to share Renee Good shooting evidence with her office

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty on Friday called on members of the public to send any video or other evidence in the fatal shooting of Renee Good directly to her office, challenging the Trump administration's decision to leave the investigation solely to the FBI.

Moriarty said that although her office has collaborated effectively with the FBI in past cases, she is concerned by the Trump administration's decision to bar state and local agencies from playing any role in the investigation into Wednesday's killing of Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.

She also said that despite the Trump administration’s insistence that the officer who shot Good has complete legal immunity, that isn’t the case.

“We do have jurisdiction to make this decision with what happened in this case,” she said at a news conference. “It does not matter that it was a federal law enforcement agent.”

Moriarty said her office would post a link for the public to submit footage of the shooting, even though she acknowledged that she wasn't sure what legal outcome submissions might produce.

The prosecutor's announcement came on a third day of Minneapolis protests over Good's killing and a day after federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon.

Good's wife, Becca Good, released a statement to Minnesota Public Radio on Friday saying, “kindness radiated out of her.”

"On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns," Becca Good said.

“I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him,” she wrote. “That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.”

The reaction to the Good's shooting was immediate in the city where police killed George Floyd in 2020, with hundreds of protesters converging on the shooting scene and the school district canceling classes for the rest of the week as a precaution.

On Thursday night, hundreds marched in freezing rain down one of Minneapolis’ major thoroughfares, chanting “ICE out now!” and holding signs saying, “Killer ice off our streets." And on Friday, protesters were out again demonstrating outside of a federal facility that is serving as a hub for the immigration crackdown that began Tuesday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Authorities erected barricades outside the facility Friday.

City workers, meanwhile, removed makeshift barricades made of old Christmas trees and other debris that had been blocking the streets near the scene of Good's shooting. Officials said they would leave up a shrine to the 37-year-old mother of three.

The Portland shootings happened outside a hospital Thursday afternoon. Federal immigration officers shot and wounded a man and woman, identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Venezuela nationals Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, who were inside a vehicle, and their conditions weren't immediately known. The FBI and the Oregon Department of Justice were investigating.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the city council called on ICE to end all operations in the city until a full investigation is completed. Hundreds protested Thursday night at a local ICE building. Early Friday, Portland police reported that officers had arrested several protesters after asking the to get out of a street to allow traffic to flow.

Just as it did following Good's shooting, DHS defended the actions of the officers in Portland, saying it occurred after a Venezuelan man with alleged gang ties and who was involved in a recent shooting tried to “weaponize” his vehicle to hit the officers. It wasn't immediately clear if the shootings were captured on video, as Good's was.

The Minneapolis shooting happened on the second day of the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, which Homeland Security said is the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever. More than 2,000 officers are taking part and Noem said they have made more than 1,500 arrests.

The government is also shifting immigration officers to Minneapolis from sweeps in Louisiana, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. This represents a pivot, as the Louisiana crackdown that began in December had been expected to last into February.

Good's death — at least the fifth tied to immigration sweeps since Trump took office — has resonated far beyond Minneapolis, as protests happening in other places, including Texas, California, Detroit and Missouri.

In Washington, D.C., on Thursday, a woman held a sign that said, “Stop Trump’s Gestapo,” as hundreds of people marched to the White House. Protesters in Pflugerville, Texas, north of Austin, banged on the walls of an ICE facility. And a man in Los Angeles burned an American flag in front of federal detention center.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly characterized the Minneapolis shooting as an act of self-defense and cast Good as a villain, suggesting she used her vehicle as a weapon to attack the officer who shot her.

But state and local officials and protesters rejected that characterization, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying videos show the self-defense argument is “garbage.”

Several bystanders captured footage of Good's killing, which happened in a neighborhood south of downtown.

The recordings show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.

It is not clear from the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer, and there is no indication of whether the woman had interactions with agents earlier. After the shooting, the SUV speeds into two cars parked on a curb before crashing to a stop.

The federal agent who fatally shot Good is an Iraq War veteran who has served for nearly two decades in the Border Patrol and ICE, according to records obtained by AP.

Noem has not publicly named him, but a Homeland Security spokesperson said her description of his injuries last summer refers to an incident in Bloomington, Minnesota, in which court documents identify him as Jonathan Ross.

Ross got his arm stuck in the window of a vehicle whose driver was fleeing arrest on an immigration violation. Ross was dragged and fired his Taser. A jury found the driver guilty of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.

Attempts to reach Ross, 43, at phone numbers and email addresses associated with him were not successful.

Associated Press reporters Steve Karnowski and Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis; Ed White in Detroit; Valerie Gonzalez in Brownsville, Texas; Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Jim Mustian and Safiyah Riddle in New York; Ryan Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.