In Tampa, the Lightning blew a tire in the third period and watched as their 2-0 lead evaporated in a hail of goals from the Chicago Blackhawks, who rallied for five goals in a 5-2 win Thursday night. 
Dominik Kubalik picked up his first hat trick in the win.
“I’m really happy that it happened,” Kubalik said. “I have no idea [what’s clicking]. I would like to know as well. I’m just trying to the same thing … be around the net. I’ve been lucky.”
Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov had scored in the second and third periods, respectively and the Bolts seemingly had the game in hand.
“Obviously a tough one to swallow,” the Lightning’s Victor Hedman said. “We did a lot of good things for 42 minutes. I don’t know. We take a couple of penalties, and they score right after one and one on the power play. At the end of the day, you can’t give up five goals in one period.”
Corey Crawford made 37 saves to get the win.
“We’re definitely never out of game and we always have a chance with this offense,” Crawford said. “[We had] too many penalties … especially early in the game. But we showed a lot of character. It’s nice to be on the winning side this time.”
Brandon Saad started the third period outburst to make it 2-1.
“It’s a good job by our team for sticking with it against a good hockey team,” Saad said. “You get down and it’s easy to quit, but for us we had a resilient group tonight. We got around the net, got some bounces and are feeling good about ourselves.”
Slater Koekkoek also scored for the Hawks.
“In the third we stuck with it,” Kubalik said. “We were talking about shooting the puck and being around the net. We are happy we found a way to come back.”
[WATCH:Â All Blackhawks vs. Lightning highlights]
Curtis McElhinney made 22 saves in the loss.
“I thought we had good control of that game, to be honest,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “Then pucks just started going in.”

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