The Lightning played their first game in 1992 against the Chicago Blackhawks and beat them. They went on to be on top of their division within a month. They started by playing their home games in Expo Hall in Tampa and moved to the Florida Suncoast Dome in their second season. This arena was originally made for baseball, but was reconfigured to suit hockey and was renamed the Thunderdome.

In 1996, the Tampa Bay Lightning made the playoffs for the first time, but lost to the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round. They moved to a new arena, the Ice Palace, which is now known as the St. Pete Times Forum. The team was plagued with illnesses and injuries after that for a few years, which caused the team to have four losing seasons in a row between 1997 and 2001. The team was sold to Art Williams in 1998. He could not bear to see the team losing constantly and sold it after a year to Bill Davidson.

The team saw some improvement in 2001, after John Tortorella joined as head coach. In the 2002 season, the team had star players like Ruslan Fedotenko, Fredrik Modin, Brad Richards and Nikolai Khabibulin. They won the Division championship, which they were battling for against the Washington Capitals. They went on to Conference semifinals, which they lost to the New Jersey Devils. In 2003, the Bolts, as the players were also known as, made the playoffs and defeated the New York Islanders and the Montreal Canadiens to reach the conference finals. In the finals, they defeated the Philadelphia Flyers to win the Eastern Conference championship. They also made it to the Stanley Cup Finals, which they won for the first time by defeating the Calgary Flames. Brad Richards won the Conn Smythe Trophy as Most Valuable Player and Tortorella won the coach of the year award. This was the first and only time, the team won the Stanley Cup.

The Lightning saw a few changes in the roster in 2006. The team added players like Marc Denis, Shane O’Brien, Stephen Baby and Luke Richardson. The present captain of the team is Tim Taylor and head coach is still John Tortorella. The team colors are blue, silver, black and white. The mascot of the Lightning is a honeybee, known as Thunderbug. The team has not retired any jersey number as yet and only one player was inducted in the Hall of Fame, Denis Savard.