Tampa Bay Lightning Make It To Playoffs!

Tampa Bay Lightning has made it to the playoffs for the sixth year in a row, making it yet another successful year in Tampa sports! 

The Tampa Bay Lighting is heading to the playoffs once again! They will face Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round of the playoffs, which will be their eighth appearance in the past 10 years! This will be a rematch from last year as the Lightning won that series in 7 games.

Andrei Vasilevskiy made 38 saves, Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos scored 1:48 apart midway through the second period, and the Tampa Bay Lightning earned their sixth straight playoff berth with a 5-0 win over the New York Islanders on Saturday night.

The question that remains for both teams is who will have home-ice advantage in the series.  Toronto currently sits in second place in the Atlantic Division with four points above Tampa Bay and also has a game in hand. The Maple Leafs control their own destiny. Tampa Bay proved last year that they can still put up a fight against the Maple Leafs as they took a 4-3 series thriller to Toronto in a Game 7 last season. The best the Bolts can hope for is to get home-ice advantage by winning their remaining regular season games and Toronto drops a few points. As a team, the Lightning have reached the playoffs in nine of coach Jon Cooper's 10 full seasons with the team, including back-to-back Stanley Cup titles in 2020 and 2021. 

"I look at this group and they've done it in so many ways with different players yet here they are finding their way back in the playoffs," Cooper said. "The goal is to win Stanley Cups and you can't do it unless you punch your ticket [to the postseason] and once again they've done it. I'm really proud of the players." Cooper's group is the three-time Eastern Conference champions. He said the Lightning know what to do when the puck drops in the postseason and they can't wait to get going.

At 10 a.m. on Friday, April 7, the Tampa Bay Lightning will begin selling single-game tickets for their first-round Stanley Cup Playoff home games. The Lightning’s 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs will be presented by AdventHealth. 

The Lightning’s full playoff schedule will be announced at a later date. Fans may begin purchasing Lightning playoff tickets on April 7 exclusively online while Season Ticket Members and Subscribers to the Lightning Insider newsletter will have pre-sale access earlier in the week.