"We just didn't come to play tonight for the full 60 minutes," Panthers defenseman MacKenzie Weegar said. "We were in there for a bit, in the game for a bit, but then the second period came and they just kept taking it to us.
"We expected them to come out with a big push. They're the Stanley Cup champions for a reason. We weren't ready for it, plain and simple. We didn't have the compete tonight. We'll look for a big bounce-back in the next game."
Following a scoreless first period, the Lightning kicked off a scoring spree in the second when Ondrej Palat took a pass from Mikhail Sergachev and sent a one-timer past goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky on the power play to break the ice and take a 1-0 lead over the Panthers at 4:11.
A little over a minute later, Mathieu Joseph scored on a breakaway to double Tampa Bay's lead to 2-0 at 5:32. Throwing more fuel onto the fire, Tyler Johnson then lit the lamp at 12:58 to make it 3-0. Finally, with 10.4 seconds left on the clock, Johnson scored again to make it a 4-0 game.
"In the second period they came out a little harder than we did," Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. "They scored four goals, and obviously that's a really good team to give a 4-0 lead. We tried to battle back in the third, got a couple good chances, but scored only one."
Finally getting the Panthers on the board, Frank Vatrano ended goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy's shutout bid with a snipe at 9:47 of the third period that cut the deficit down to 4-1. Unfortunately, just 1:11 later, Alexander Volkov answered with a goal to put the Lighting back up 5-1 at 10:58.
With 4:15 left in regulation, Barclay Goodrow scored to lock in the 6-1 win for Tampa Bay.
Owning a 3-0-0 record following losses this season, the Panthers (8-2-2) will look to get back in the win column when they battle the Lightning (10-2-1) once again on Monday at Amalie Arena.
"We've got to be at our best to beat that team," Panthers coach Joel Quenneville said. "Whether we got comfortable or not, give them credit. We approached the game the right way, but didn't handle adversity in the middle of it… We'll move on from this game and learn from it."
Here are five takeaways from Saturday's loss in Sunrise…