Retain the champagne chilled. It is again to the slushy ice of Amalie Arena for the Colorado Avalanche following they failed to shut out the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup Final.

The Lightning overpowered Colorado with tougher physicality, clogged the neutral zone and once once more relied on goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy’s firebolt reflexes to counter Colorado’s excellent pace in a 3-2 victory in Sport 5 on Friday night time at Ball Arena.

Mentor Jon Cooper discovered a way for the Lightning to finally bottle up Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen to send the series back to Tampa with a likelihood to tie it up in Game 6 on Sunday night time.

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Ondrej Palat sent the puck by way of Darcy Kuemper’s legs with 6:22 remaining in the third interval to crack a 2-2 tie and Colorado was whistled for much too a lot of adult males on the ice with 2:38 remaining as they were attempting for the equalizer.

Cooper had complained 48 several hours before that Colorado’s game-winner in extra time arrived with also quite a few males on the ice, but the Avs didn’t get absent with it this time.

The whistles and the breaks just did not go Colorado’s way in Recreation 5. Neither did the phone calls as the Lightning knocked the Avalanche around, with or with out the puck on their sticks.

Tampa Bay went with 4 forwards when Avalanche star Cale Makar was whistled for tripping in the second period of time all through a 4-on-4 skate. Nikita Kucherov capitalized times later on by scoring just the next target in 17 ability perform chances by the Lighting in the final.

Makar atoned with a purpose early in the 3rd time period that tied it at 2.

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The Lightning are now in place to knot up the sequence this weekend back again in Florida, where by Avalanche centre Nazim Kadri complained about the lousy ice in advance of scoring the video game-winner in Game 4.

Makar explained immediately after that thriller that the Avalanche however weren’t exhaling, insisting a fourth get around the back again-to-back again champs would prove the most difficult to occur by.

Playing in their 67th playoff activity given that the initial spherical of the 2020 playoffs, the Lightning held alive their hopes of turning out to be the to start with staff to gain a few consecutive Stanley Cups in the wage cap period.

To do that, they’ll also have to come to be the initial staff considering the fact that the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs to bounce again from a 3-1 deficit to acquire the Cup.

A single down, two to go.