312 penalty minutes handed out in insane NHL preseason game.

This was one of the most intense preseason games in recent National Hockey League history, one that was significantly more intense than most games we see during the course of a regular season.

On Saturday night, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers renewed their intrastate rivalry and did so in spectacular fashion when both teams effectively tried to take one another out on the ice all night long. There were a staggering number of penalties handed out which add up to a whopping 312 penalty minutes, including 18 misconducts that resulted in some very thin benches on both sides with 16 players ejected from the game.

It was a wild one, so wild in fact that the NHL officials on the ice couldn't even keep track of what was going on. At one point during the game the Panthers were stripped of a goal, several minutes after it had happened, because the league came to realize that the goal had been set up by Niko Mikkola who had been ejected earlier in the game.

That was the least concerning thing that happened during this one for both teams involved however as things were truly ugly on the ice. We saw several brawls throughout the game that involved just about everyone on both sides of the ice at different points in the game.

There were plenty of nasty hits in this game as well and at no point was anyone safe. The Panthers' Carter Verhaeghe effectively threw away a 5 minute power play when he crushed the Lightning's Zemgus Girgensons with a heavy hit from behind that sent Girgensons face first into the boards.

It wasn't simply one team trying to bully the other either, with the Lightning showing plenty of nastiness in this one as well. Lightning enforcer Scott Sabourin sent a pretty clear message early on when he knocked the Panthers' Aaron Ekblad out of the game with a stiff shot to the head that came after he had already delivered a heavy hit on Ekblad.

Things got so out of hand with penalties and ejections that at one point it appeared as though the Lightning had more players in the penalty box than on their actual bench.

This has most definitely set the stage for the regular season and I for one can't wait to see what the next clash between these two bitters rivals will deliver.