The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers will meet in the playoffs for the first time in their franchises history. Despite a couple of decades of coexistence in the Sunshine State, the two teams have never met in the postseason. That ends on Sunday.
On Thursday, the NHL finally released the schedule for the first round and the Bolts/Cats get underway on Sunday. For both teams it will mean that they haven’t played competitively in almost a week as their last game of the regular season was on Monday. The rest should help both teams as key players on each side have missed recent games due to injuries.