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TAMPA, Fla. – It is Stanley Cup Playoff season once again and the Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> are ready to start on a high note, with a familiar post-season foe.<\/p>\n Stanley Cup Playoff Season <\/p>\n The Lightning are facing the Montreal Canadiens.<\/p>\n Bolts open the postseason at home in Benchmark Arena, with the first two games being played there.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Game one is Sunday, April 19,\u00a0at 5:45 p.m., and game two will be on Tuesday, April 21,\u00a0at 7 p.m.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Lightning will be facing the Canadiens for the fifth time in postseason history.\u00a0 Their most recent meeting was the 2021 Stanley Cup Final, in which the Lightning won the Stanley Cup in five games that year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n What they’re saying:<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper is looking forward to getting the ball rolling, saying this team is special \u2014 they\u2019ve persevered through a lot and can adapt to what they need to make a win happen.<\/p>\n “As a coach, this is what you want to do,” said Coach Cooper. “You want to play in the playoffs.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n “As a group, we’ve never taken that for granted,” he added.\u00a0\u00a0“As much as our team has changed, especially since our trips to the cup, this group, they just seem to find a way.”<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Lightning Pep Rally <\/p>\n The Tampa Bay Lightning will have a playoff pep rally at Sparkman Wharf on Friday evening from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.<\/p>\n Officials say the rally will include pop-up shops, interactive stations, music and giveaways.<\/p>\n The Source: This article was written using information from the Tampa Bay Lightning website and reporting from FOX 13’s Heather Healy.<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a>Sports<\/a>Stanley Cup Playoffs<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"article TAMPA, Fla. – It is Stanley Cup Playoff season once again and the Tampa Bay Lightning are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5105],"tags":[5,189,40,4,43,14,540,92,5168,5167],"class_list":{"0":"post-554628","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-lightning","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-lightning","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-stanley-cup","14":"tag-tampa-bay","15":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","16":"tag-tampabay","17":"tag-tampabaylightning"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116420843603768147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/vlcsnap-2026-04-17-10h03m42s889.png\")
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