Panthers' Sam Bennett gets brutally honest about his feelings towards Tampa Bay Lightning players

The Florida Panthers are up 2-0 in their first round playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning after a 2-0 win in Game 2. Florida is riding the momentum of a 6-2 win over Tampa in Game 1 on Tuesday and now the series heads to Sunrise for Game 3 on home ice, Amerant Bank Arena.

The Panthers got goals from Sam Bennett and Nate Schmidt in the win. Panthers forward Bennett pulled no punches when discussing his feelings towards the rival Lightning players.

"The rivalry is growing, you know, we just hate them more and more every time we play them, it makes for good hockey," Bennett said.

Bennett was fired up after seeing Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov take a hard hit from Lightning forward Brandon Hagel in the third period. Hagel got a 5-minute major interference penalty for the play that knocked Barkov out of the game.

"Yeah, it's tough to see, anytime your best player goes out like that, you always see, it's tough to lose on this, you know... he's a tough guy, so I'm sure he'll be fine, but you hate to see that," Bennett said of the hit on Barkov.

Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 19 shots. Andrei Vasilevskiy had 21 saves for Tampa.

"It's exactly what we wanted to do, come in here and win the first two,"Bennett said about taking a 2-0 series lead on the road in Tampa.

The Panthers will host the Lightning on Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. ET in Sunrise.

Game 2: Panthers shut out Lightning in 2-0 victory

The Lightning almost struck early, but misfires cost them. Just under a minute into the game, Jake Guentzel had a wide-open net to aim at, but he sent the puck high over the crossbar.

Later, Brayden Point found himself alone in front with a golden scoring chance, but his shot missed the target entirely—high and wide to the left.

Florida made them pay. At 4:15 in the first period, Schmidt took a feed from Sam Reinhart and unleashed a one-timer from the top of the right circle to take a 1-0 lead.

Sergei Bobrovsky stopped one of his biggest saves coming late in the third. At 16:33, he robbed J.J. Moser with a sharp glove stop on a clean look from the right circle.

Sam Bennett iced the game with an empty-net goal with just four seconds left to secure the shutout win for Florida.