What’s all this fuss about home ice advantage?
On Thursday night in Washington, the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning upended the Capitals, again, to even their best-of-seven series at two games apiece with a 4-2 win.
Andrei Vasilevskiy returned to form and made 36 saves to get the Bolts back in the 
series with the mythological home ice advantage on their side.
“Vasy was there to bail us out,” the Lightning’s Steven Stamkos said. “That’s why he’s one of, if not the best goalie in the world. He’s given us a chance throughout the year when we haven’t had our best, and tonight was another example of that.”
Remarkably, the Lighting are 5-1 on the road this post season.
“It’s pretty bizarre, but you come on the road and there’s just this business-like attitude where you’re together as a group, you’re with each other for dinner, you’re watching the other game, you’re playing cards, you’re just going into the hockey rink and just playing,” Stamkos said. “We’ve found success on the road, and you need to if you want to be where we are.”
Alex Killorn scored late in the third period to give the Bolts a 3-2 lead.
“It’s a missed opportunity,” Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin said. “It is what it is. Nothing we can do. We’re not going to look back. We’re just going to look forward. This group of guys has been in different situations all year and we fight through it.”
Stamkos, Brayden Point and Anthony Cirelli also scored in the Tampa win.
“You love your games when you don’t really need your goaltender and your team is playing well in front of you, but when you don’t have your ‘A’ game, you need your goalie to have his ‘A’ game, and [Andrei Vasilevskiy] sure did,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said of his goalie after the win.
Dmitry Orlov and Evgeny Kuznetsov struck for the Caps goals.
“We lost the battle again,” Ovechkin said.
[WATCH: All Lightning vs. Capitals highlights | Complete Lightning vs. Capitals series coverage]
Braden Holtby made 16 saves in the loss.
“We’ll battle through it. This group has been resilient as [heck] all year, and I don’t expect anything — nothing has come easy to this team. Everybody knows that. This team is just used to that, but we’re going go to Tampa and I expect us to respond the way we have,” the Caps head coach Barry Trotz said after the loss.
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