Mackie Samoskevich scored for the Panthers (29-25-3), who have lost five of their past six.
Daniil Tarasov allowed five goals on 25 shots before leaving with an undisclosed injury at 6:09 of the third period. He was replaced by Sergei Bobrovsky, who made two saves in relief.
“We’ve got to start playing playoff hockey now and I think that’s a good thing for us,” Samoskevich said. “For us to get to where we want to go we’re going to have to play that game. It’s going to be a challenge, but I think we can do it.”
Florida coach Paul Maurice was assessed a game misconduct at 4:06 of the third period. Assistant coach Jamie Kompon replaced him on the bench.
“I loved our first, the third goal hurt us, but the fourth goal kind of put the game out of reach a little bit for us,” Maurice said. “But up until that point I was really pleased with the way we were playing.”
Brandon Hagel gave the Lightning a 1-0 lead at 2:08 of the first period. Victor Hedman took a slap shot at the left point that Hagel tipped between his legs in the left face-off circle, and the puck went off the right leg of Panthers defenseman Jeff Petry and through Tarasov’s pads.
Zemgus Girgensons made it 2-0 at 14:08 when he slid a backhander five-hole on Tarasov from the low slot.
“It’s been incredible, you can gain a lot of confidence off of continuing to win and play the right way,” Hagel said. “A lot of guys in this dressing room stepped up after getting called up. We’ve had a lot of injuries and we still stayed the course and continued to play the same way. We’ve put ourselves in a really good spot.”
Jake Guentzel pushed the lead to 3-0 with a power-play goal at 1:14 of the second period. Darren Raddysh sent a one-timer from between the circles and the puck hit off Tarasov’s glove to Guentzel, who tapped in the rebound from the right of the crease.