Tampa inch closer to Boston

In Boston, Andrei Vasilevskiy made 35 saves and the Tampa Bay Lightning used their special teams to close in on the Bruins in a 5-3 win.

“[The] bottom line is you’ve got to go out and win the hockey game,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “I thought we played, aside from the Pastrnak breakaway (stopped by Vasilevskiy at 12:50 of the third period), I thought we controlled that third period. We didn’t give them too much. Our power play came out big for us … and so [I’m] pretty proud of the guys for that.”

David Pastrnak potted his 48th goal for the Bruins.

“They’re a really good hockey team,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. “You spot them two goals – [we] battled all night to get back into it, we never got the equalizer — it’s just a big hill to climb. Lack of urgency on our top [power-play] group. A little bit uncharacteristic, but it’s crept into our game. So this will be good for us, for our power play, to get their attention a little bit.”

Anthony Cirelli, Mikhail Sergachev and Cedric Paquette scored for the Bolts.

Charlie McAvoy and Sean Kuraly also scored for Boston.

“I think it’s becoming more intense, and it will become more meaningful should we meet again, and it’s getting amped up because both teams probably feel physically they’re up to the challenge,” Cassidy said.

Alex Killorn scored on the power play for the Bolts.

“I think it’s big,” Killorn said, “because we go into the period, they had scored two goals, there were a couple fights, it seems like momentum’s kind of going in their favor, they get a power-play goal. To get that at the beginning of the period is huge going forward.”

Nikita Kucherov added an empty netter.

[WATCH: All Lightning vs. Bruins highlights]

Tuukka Rask made 20 saves in the loss.

“Obviously we didn’t get the two points, but I think the way that everybody played hard and everybody played physical no matter who it was, I think there was a good response [after] going down 3-0 and making it a game,” McAvoy said. “And sometimes it doesn’t go your way, and that was kind of what happened tonight. But we’ll take some positives from it, get back on the horse.”