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
Tampa Bay Lightning right wing Nikita Kucherov (86) celebrates his goal against the Florida Panthers with center Brayden Point (21) and center Yanni Gourde (37) during the second period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Jonas Johansson (31) congratulates goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy (88) after an NHL hockey game against the New York Rangers, Monday, April 7, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Florida Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky (72) acknowledges the crowd after the Panthers defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs during the third period of an NHL hockey game, Tuesday, April 8, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Widening protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy.
Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has put Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at some 1.4 million to $1.
Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated in the years since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.
A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran. Iran has installed a banner in Tehran warning the United States and Israel that their soldiers could be killed if they take military action there.
Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.
Demonstrations have reached over 170 locations in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early Sunday. The death toll had reached at least 15 killed, it added, with more than 580 arrests. The group, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting, has been accurate in past unrest.
Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities.
But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”
The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.
In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months.
The protests began first with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.
Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.
Now Venezuelan ally Maduro is in U.S. custody. Iran’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the “illegal U.S. attack against Venezuela." U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth likened the attack to the U.S. strikes in Iran last year, saying that “Maduro had his chance, just like Iran had their chance.” He added that adversaries of the U.S. should “remain on notice” that “America can project our will anywhere, anytime.”
China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.
Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.
Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.
Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.
But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.
Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.
Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, and relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
FILE - An Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, on March 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - A customer shops at a supermarket at a shopping mall in northern Tehran, on Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Current and pre-revolution Iranian banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - People cross the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)
People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
