You really should check out the Stanley Cup Playoffs; there’s so much hockey action happening that you don’t want to miss out on! The games between the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning are totally living up to the phrase “Absolute Cinema!” So, the Panthers are up 2-0 right now, but there’s definitely an issue that popped up in Game 2. Aleksander Barkov, the captain of the Panthers, got hurt during the third period at 9:51 after taking a hit from Lightning forward Brandon Hagel, and the details about the injury are still under wraps.

After checking out the video, they decided to give Hagel a major penalty. You won’t believe this! The Panthers were really upset. Do you remember what Sam Bennett mentioned? “Yeah, I mean, I don’t think we expected anything less. You know, two teams that play each other a lot in the playoffs. That rivalry is just growing and growing, you know. We just hate them more and more every time we play them, so it makes for good hockey,” said the hockey forward about the situation.

Also, a video popped up on X, shared by B/R Open Ice, with the caption: “Matthew Tkachuk, Brad Marchand, and Sam Bennett were all chirping the Lightning bench at the end of Game 2. Absolute nightmare fuel for the rest of the NHL.” Joe Haggerty chimed in on this social media post, saying, “Florida Panthers are all telling Kucherov that he’s going to get it for Hagel’s hit on Barkov. Things are about to get nasty in the Battle of Florida.”

So, it looks like Tampa Bay’s Hagel stirred up some trouble for Florida by potentially sidelining the Panthers’ captain, and you can bet the players in white and red weren’t too pleased about it. In support of Sam Bennett, the video captured Matthew Tkachuk and Brad Marchand constantly chirping at the Tampa Bay players. What’s their target? People were really pointing fingers at Nikita Kucherov.

If you’ve been following hockey for a while, you know it gets pretty intense when players like Tkachuk, Marchand, and Bennett are out there trying to intimidate their opponents on the ice. Before the trade, having these three on the same team must have felt like a dream. But now that Florida has Marchand, those kinds of antics could definitely happen.

So, is it like an eye for an eye? Well, maybe! Who really knows? With the energy these three are bringing, it seems like Kucherov could end up in a scrap with at least one of them in the upcoming Game 3 between the Panthers and the Lightning. And are you aware that a similar situation was predicted way before the Stanley Cup Playoffs?

NHL analyst’s tip for the Florida Panthers

Whenever the Florida Derby rolls around, hockey fans really get pumped up. With the Stanley Cup Playoffs in progress, the excitement was through the roof. So, NHL analyst Steve Dangle mentioned how fast the Panthers can get under Tampa Bay Lightning’s Nikita Kucherov’s skin, saying, “Kucherov gets both kinds of mad. He gets ‘I’m going to obliterate you and turn into the best player in the world mad.’ And ‘I’m gonna take my ball and go home mad.’ If you can get him to be ‘take my ball and go home mad.’ You win the series. No problem.”

If you put Matthew Tkachuk, Brad Marchand, and Sam Bennett on the same team, it’s easy for one of them to irritate Kucherov in the playoffs, whether it’s early on or late on. So, Dangle wasn’t entirely wrong in his prediction.

Has something like this happened before? Back in December 2024, Kucherov got tossed from a game after a knee-on-knee clash with the Panthers’ Tkachuk. It resulted in a major penalty and game misconduct for him. As Game 3 gets closer, we’ll just have to wait and see what unfolds between these players on the ice.