Lightning look to regain Eastern Conference Final lead with win tonight

The Tampa Bay Lightning face a daunting challenge now that their Eastern Conference Final series against the Pittsburgh Penguins is tied 2-2 and reduced to a best-of-three.

Two of the final three games in the series will be played at Pittsburgh’s Consol Energy Center, including tonight’s Game 5, giving the Penguins the slight advantage.

But the Lightning faced this exact scenario a year ago in the ECF against the New York Rangers. In that series, the Bolts would win both road games, including a 2-0 shutout of the Rangers in Game 7 at Madison Square Garden, a place the Rangers had never lost a Game 7 previously, to advance to their second-ever Stanley Cup Final and first under head coach Jon Cooper.

That experience should serve the Lightning well as they try to wrestle the series lead back from the Penguins tonight.

“It’s a good lesson because (the Rangers) were a tough challenge than, and it’s going to be a really tough challenge (in Pittsburgh),” Lightning center Brian Boyle said. “But the way we played in that Game 5, we were really, really responsible. We skated. We competed. We wanted to make sure we didn’t give up too much in terms of scoring chances against, and it’s going to have to be the same (tonight).”

The Lightning enter Game 5 with confidence knowing they’ve been in this situation before and haven’t just survived but thrived. Tampa Bay blanked the Rangers in Game 5 behind a 26-save performance by Ben Bishop, and while the Bolts likely won’t have Bishop tonight as he continues to recover from a lower-body injury, backup goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy is more than capable of producing similar results.

Vasilevskiy earned his first-career playoff victory as a starter after stopping 35-of-38 Pittsburgh shots in Game 4 …

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