In Sunrise, rookie netminder Spencer Knight made 36 saves and the Florida Panthers stayed alive in their series with the Tampa Bay Lightning with a 4-1 win Game 5, on 
Monday night.
“For me, I just approached it like I did every other hockey game, like my first game, second game here, whatever it may be, it was all pretty much the same,” Knight said. “I was a little nervous, but I remembered just to play hockey. I controlled what I can and just had fun.”
Ross Colton scored the Lightning’s only goal. His goal gave the Bolts a 1-0 lead.
Colton’s goal was the first shot taken by Tampa, Knight stopped the next 36.
“That’s a really good hockey team over there,” Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos said. “They weren’t going to just roll over and die. It’s two really good hockey teams going at it. We knew it was going to be a tough series from the beginning. We put ourselves in a good position to go home for Game 6 and try to win a series. There’s no point in dwelling on the past now. We have a 3-2 series lead. We weren’t able to close it out tonight and we’ll expect a better effort from our group next game.”
MacKenzie Weegar tied the game, 1-1, and Mason Marchment gave the Panthers a 2-1 lead.
“It was awesome,” Florida’s Alexander Barkov said. “Awesome atmosphere. Awesome feeling. We were excited to play, and a good result too. We’re excited to go to Tampa right now.”
Patric Hornqvist also scored for the Panthers to give them a 3-1 lead in the third period.
“We came into the room thinking, ‘Boy, are we lucky,” Panthers head coach Joel Quenneville said. “Spencer put on a clinic and gave us a chance. That was our worst period in a long time. Too stationary, and Tampa was ready. They wanted to get this thing done. I thought we hung in there, big saves, big saves, and in the second we started coming. The goals got us going. I thought we had a real good response in the third period, but you don’t have to say any more. The goalie won us the game.”
Frank Vatrano iced the win with an empty-net goal with 15 seconds left on the game clock.
We’ve played enough against them,” Barkov said. “We know how they play. We know who is on the ice. We know how to play against them. We just have to do it all the time. Obviously today was a good game. We’ve got to build on this, go to Tampa and keep getting better.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 34 saves in the loss.
“They came out in the second and it was OK, but you could see they had a desperation level,” Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper said. “They’re down a goal and on the brink, so they elevated, and we didn’t. … They did a good job. They fed off the crowd and they played D. We had a couple of good looks, didn’t go in. But if we’re going to win, if you’re going to win a playoff series, it can’t be on and off. We’ve got to be on our game for the entire game. Our second wasn’t our best and we paid for it.”
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