In Toronto, the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning went back and forth most of the night before Ondrej Palat struck with 4:40 gone in extra time to give the Lightning a 4-3 win in Game 2.
“Even when they scored, we scored,” Palat said. “We responded every time. I thought we played really well. I think in the third, we stopped skating a little bit. Other than that, I thought we played well.”
The win tied the series at 1-1.
“If you want to have any chance of winning and going deep in the playoffs, adversity strikes in the weirdest ways and you never know when it’s going to happen,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “It’s like a sandwich that doesn’t taste very good, if you know what I mean? … If you have mental weakness at all, you’re probably sitting there saying, ‘Poor us.’ It’s just not in this group. That’s not how they operate.”
Blake Coleman had two goals in regulation for the Bolts.
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 22 saves in the win.
Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov had a single marker in the game when he scored to tie the game, 2-2.
Brad Marchand struck twice for the Bruins.
“I thought we had good looks,” Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We just didn’t have the volume of attempts. We had point-blanks in the slot. … There were some good looks for us. There just wasn’t the quantity of the kind of play like our tying goal by [Marchand]. So we certainly need a little bit more of that.”
Marchand’s second goal came with less than four minutes left on the clock in the third period to force the extra session.
“I’m around the front of the net,” Marchand said. “I just happened to find a couple pucks around there and kind of nice plays. But I think it’s mostly because I’m now in front of the net instead of on the half-wall.”
Nick Ritchie opened the scoring in the first period to give the Bruins a 1-0 lead.
“They tied the game with less than four minutes left,” Tampa’s Victor Hedman said. “Very happy with the way we responded. Think we deserved to win today.”
Game 3 is Wednesday.
[WATCH: All Bruins vs. Lightning highlights]
Jaroslav Halak made 36 saves in the loss.
“I feel fine,” Halak said. “No one said it was going to be an easy series. We’re tied now and basically starting from zero now.”
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