Cuban sandwiches. Tom Brady and Gronk. Hockey, too. It’s Tampa vs. Miami in everything

We’re not close. We’re not friends. We happen to share a big, gun-shaped, fraud-infected chunk of U.S. geography called “Florida.”

And, now, our National Hockey League teams born in the early 1990s are meeting in the playoffs for the second consecutive season, putting muscle on a rivalry that briefly waxed in the franchises’ infancies, then waned as they couldn’t manage to be relevant at the same time.

But, now they are, the Panthers having the NHL’s best regular season record the year after possibly being the NHL’s second best team. They lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Tampa Bay Lightning, who were on their way to a second consecutive Stanley Cup.

So, in the spirit of regionalism rah-rah inspired by sports teams of athletes born and raised in neither city, here’s an examination of the South Florida vs. Tampa-St. Peterburg rivalry.

For Panthers, ‘a lot of guys wanted to play’ Lightning. And a ‘hard decision’ on Duclair

Cuban Sandwiches

They have Ybor City, we have Little Havana, or, more accurately, Calle Ocho.

The rest of “Little Havana” could as well be “Little Central America.” Current snapshot: a Cuban-American Miami police officer eating in a Little Havana Mexican restaurant asking a Cuban-American woman where the good Cuban restaurants are in Little Havana because “I work a lot of Marlins games, so I know about all the good Nicaraguan places.”

Back to Miami vs. Tampa, which, when it comes to food, the argument centers on the Cuban sandwich. Pork, glazed ham, Swiss cheese, yellow mustard, dill pickles, smushed down, hot or cold is how it’s done in South Florida.

Over in Tampa, they throw salami onto it. They might even throw mayonnaise into the mix. No comment.

Tampa’s city commission officially declared the “Historic Tampa Cuban Sandwich” as the city’s official sandwich.

Our people from elsewhere

Because we’re using professional sports teams, which tend to be filled with transplants, let’s talk about how the different energies brought by each area’s transplants help create a rivalry vibe.

Down here in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach County area, we’re the Caribbean and Central America laced with people running from the cold and Type As of the Northeast. Our transplants come from Philly, Boston and, of course, New York. We’re the sixth borough. Miss a flight to LaGuardia or JFK? Like missing a bus. Another one will be leaving shortly.

Florida’s West Coast gets the United States’ so-called Midwest. Nice (or at least polite) people who use turn signals and hide neuroses instead of turning them into sitcom characters.

Such is the case that when the Tampa Bay Lightning entered the NHL in 1992, they were put in the Norris Division with Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Minnesota (in its last season before moving to Dallas) and Toronto.

Football

The 2022 NFL season will mark two years since Tom Brady left the New England Patriots for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, lured Rob Gronkowski out of a retirement of spinning in South Beach and led Tampa Bay to a Super Bowl championship. It’ll also mark 20 years since the Buccaneers first Super Bowl title.

And, it’ll be 30 years since the 1992 Dolphins made the AFC Championship Game, the last time the aqua-white-and-orange got within a game of the Super Bowl. Back then, the Buccaneers were such a punch line that when they drafted University of Miami star Warren Sapp, he looked like he’d been drafted by the DMV.

That’s why this NHL rivalry already has surpassed the NFL rivalry. Those who get AARP applications in the mail remember decades of Tampa Bay as the NFL’s Walking Dead and the Dolphins always being at least “good.” Younger than Millennials remember the Dolphins providing the comedy — Bullygate! Orange carpet! “Turn that thumb this way!” — and the Bucs blazing brightly or at least being interesting.

Besides, the Bucs started 10 years after the Dolphins did and with 26 consecutive losses. After a first season in the AFC, they’ve lived in the NFC. The Dolphins live in the AFC. They play in the regular season once every four years. Aside from Tampa Bay getting Brady out of the Dolphins’ AFC East hair, they have nothing to do with each other.

The NHL teams on the other hand ...

Buildings, schools, cities: Changes since the Florida Panthers last won a playoff series

Baseball, goalies and ‘Pussy cats’

The Tampa Bay Lightning had a pretty good deal for a couple of months as the 1992-93 NHL season started. They had Florida to themselves, the NHL expanding there after a South Florida group bungled its bid. Being in the Norris Division brought in the teams their transplants had left behind. They were competitive.

All of a sudden, out of the NHL’s winter meetings at The Breakers’ in Palm Beach, the league all but left the Lightning at the bar to dance the night away with South Florida.

Not only did the league shockingly announce new franchises for Orange County and Miami at the December 1992 meeting. But the expansion draft rules for them gave them much better player pickings than had been available for Tampa Bay and Ottawa a year earlier. So much more so that the NHL allowed Tampa Bay and Ottawa to take part in an expansion draft Phase II that let them take players from the teams eventually named “Mighty Ducks” and “Panthers.”

The Lightning got realigned to the “Atlantic Division” with the Panthers and South Florida’s transplant favorites — the three New York area teams (Rangers, Islanders, New Jersey Devils) and Philadelphia.

Oh, and another puck to the cup for the Lightning — the Panthers were owned by H. Wayne Huizenga, the Marlins owner who Tampa-St. Pete fans blamed for preventing baseball’s San Francisco Giants from going Bay Area to Bay Area.

And, And, AND! Huizenga named the Panthers the “Florida Panthers,” using the state instead of “Miami,” just as he did with the then-Florida Marlins. You know how other NFL teams and fans felt when Dallas got tagged “America’s Team?” Same energy.

Tampa Bay general manager Phil Esposito jokingly called the Panthers “pussy cats” during the preseason, drawing icy glares from Panthers GM Bobby Clarke, but most of the hostility came from the West Coast. Newspaper advertisements for Tampa Bay’s Oct. 9, 1993, home opener asked fans to come out to the ThunderDome (now Tropicana Field) to see the Lightning beat “Huizenga’s Panthers.”

In front of a then-NHL record crowd of 27,227, the Panthers got their first win as a franchise, 2-0.

The first several years of their co-existence set the tone for the franchises’ relationship — one team kind of good or, at least, competitive and, the other being too much of an annual disappointment to be considered a rival.

Until the turn of the millennium, the Panthers were the better team, going to the playoffs three times, just missing twice, while the Lightning sank to being named professional sports’ worst franchise by Sports Illustrated. They missed the playoffs by an average of 31 points per season over five seasons, which means you’re usually were out of the playoff race by December.

Then, boosted by 1998’s No. 1 overall draft pick Vincent Lecavalier (taken with a pick the Panthers traded to San Jose months earlier) and Martin St. Louis, the Lightning turned things around and won the 2004 Stanley Cup. During that series, the Panthers rehired Mike Keenan and fired Rick Dudley as general manager months after Dudley had fired Keenan. The Lightning ascended to the NHL throne; the Panthers were the NHL’s jesters.

The Lightning got it back together in the 2010’s, losing the 2015 Stanley Cup Final to Chicago, while the Panthers couldn’t put together consecutive playoff seasons.

Now, in the 2020s, the rivalry the NHL envisioned 30 years ago burns, their talent-fat rosters with handball wall goaltending mirroring each other.

But, no matter who wins, you don’t put salami on a Cuban sandwich.

Panthers learned from Lightning. It made them better. Now, they’re ready to beat Tampa.