Brandon Hagel and Brayden Point scored for the Lightning (30-21-5), who had an eight-game home winning streak end. Andrei Vasilevskiy allowed six goals on 22 shots before being replaced by Jonas Johansson (six saves) to start the third period.
"For 26 seconds it was a heck of a game for the home fans. After that the better team clearly won tonight," Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. "They outskated us, they won the puck battles, they won the special teams war. ... If there's a TV timeout war, they probably won that too."
Hagel gave the Lightning a 1-0 lead on the rush, extending his point streak to an NHL career-high nine games.
"It wasn't our night tonight," Hagel said. "We'll get to play them one more time this year (March 16 at Florida)."
Montour tied it 1-1 at 7:01 when his shot from the left point deflected off Lightning defenseman Emil Martinsen Lilleberg. Bennett then put the Panthers ahead 2-1 at 12:28 with a one-timer off a pass from Tkachuk.
"This is probably our biggest rival in the League," Bennett said. "We played hard and we played right until the end. We didn't take our foot off the gas. There's definitely a chance to see them again this year, and we've got to be prepared for that."
Kevin Stenlund made it 3-1 at 17:44 with a wrist shot from the left circle, and Gustav Forsling increased the lead to 4-1 at 18:38 from the left point with bodies in front.
Tampa Bay unsuccessfully challenged for goaltender interference, giving Florida a power play, and Tkachuk made it 5-1 on the resulting man-advantage 23 seconds into the second period. His shot from a sharp angle deflected in off the stick of Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak.
Tkachuk scored another power-play goal to extend the lead to 6-1 at 1:37, redirecting Verhaeghe’s point shot.
"This was such a strange game,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “... For the coach once it gets to 5-1 or 6-1, it's just ... nothing good happens. But I didn't think we came out of our structure. Over 82 games you'll go into those every once in a while. We've certainly had a whole lot of nights, especially early this year, where the puck didn't go for us. It's good for the guys to get a chance to have one of these nights."
Verhaeghe sent a one-timer past Johansson to make it 7-1 at 1:05 of the third period. Bennett’s second goal pushed it to 8-1 on the power play at 1:56, and Verhaeghe scored on a rebound for his 30th of the season and a 9-1 lead at 4:09.
"[30 goals] is a great accomplishment," Verhaeghe said. "But it's obviously not the main goal."
