The Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers were scheduled to play a preseason game on Saturday night. Instead, an event more akin to a UFC fight night broke out.
The two Eastern Conference rivals racked up an absurd 322 penalty minutes combined, with 16 players being ejected. Incredibly, only four of the total 22 power plays awarded were converted, all by the Panthers, who won the game 7-0.
Panthers vs. Lightning penalty summary (10/4/2025)
The night devolved into a face-punching exhibition due to the Lightning’s desire to even the score with the Panthers over forward AJ Greer’s excessively violent treatment of Brandon Hagel on Friday.
“It was a little bit outrageous,” Panthers center Evan Rodrigues said post-game to Florida Hockey Now. “I think it probably would’ve been better if [we ran out of players], it just got silly and stupid by the end of it. That wasn’t hockey.”
The first period alone featured 59 penalty minutes with multiple fracases breaking out. Of note, Lightning forward Scott Sabourin received a five-minute major and a game misconduct for punching and cross-checking Panthers star defenseman Aaron Ekblad in the face.
Panthers winger Carter Verhaeghe created another tussle when he boarded Lightning forward Zemgus Girgensons, earning himself a five-minute major and a game misconduct.
The first intermission did nothing to bring the temperature down at Amerant Bank Arena as players remained very much hot under the collar. Not even five minutes into the second period, Tampa Bay had six players in the penalty box at once and just four on the bench.
The hilarious visual mirrored a moment from a 2021 regular-season meeting between the Washington Capitals and New York Rangers.
Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky wanted none of the chaos. While the officials were constantly having to separate guys and sort out who belonged in the sin bin, the Russian netminder stuck to his crease and took the extra break in action to keep his legs loose.
The opposite could be said for former Washington Capitals goalie Pheonix Copley, who relieved Andrei Vasilevskiy in the third period. Copley joined a fracas that centered around Maxwell Crozier and Mackie Samoskevich late in the game. Copley, as a member of the Hershey Bears, once got into a goalie fight with Jordan Binnington when the two were in the AHL in 2017.
And as if the game couldn’t get any crazier, the Panthers had a goal taken off the board late in the third period because defenseman Niko Mikkola recorded the secondary assist but was already ejected from the contest and shouldn’t have been on the ice.
The officials weren’t made aware of their oversight until 11 minutes after the goal was scored.
Tampa left winger Dylan Duke led all skaters with 31 PIMs. Only 11 skaters from both teams avoided a trip to the penalty box on Saturday. Of the 26 players who were assessed at least one penalty, only 9 recorded single-digit PIMs.
While the roughness seemed extraordinarily excessive, the matchup fell well short of the NHL record for combined PIMs in a game (419), which was achieved in 2004 by the Ottawa Senators and Philadelphia Flyers. If Saturday were a regular-season game, it would’ve placed 9th all-time.
Saturday’s game went off the rails due to Greer’s actions just two nights prior.
In the first period on Thursday, Greer cross-checked Hagel and then caught him in the face with his stick shaft as Hagel spun around to respond. Greer seemingly took issue with how Hagel reacted and needlessly threw two punches to his face to express his displeasure.
That prompted a proportionate response from Hagel’s teammates, who swooped in to give Greer a taste of his own medicine. Greer received an additional minor penalty for roughing plus a 10-minute misconduct.
The 28-year-old accrued 29 total PIMs in the contest, including a game misconduct, which saw him ejected in the third period. He was also handed a game misconduct in the second period on Saturday.
Last season, Greer racked up the most PIMs on the Panthers by far (130) across 81 games. Centerman Sam Bennett was the next closest with 90.
The NHL announced Friday that Greer was fined $2,213.54 – the maximum allowed under the current CBA – for the incident with Hagel.
