Saturday, 4 a.m.

They live.

At times, it looked shaky. At times, they looked as if they were staring into the off-season.

And still, they survived.

The Tampa Bay Lightning staved off elimination from the NHL playoffs Friday night, taking a 1-0 victory over Montreal in the Bell Centre.

Gage Concalves tapped in a close goal with 9:03 left in the extra period to tie the series at 3-3. Four of the six games have finished in overtime.

The game was a duel between the Bolts' Andrei Vasilevskiy (who stoppped all 30 Montreal shots) and Montreal's Jakub Dobes (who stopped 32 of 33).

It was Vasilevskiy's eighth career shutout and his 70th victory.

Neither team could score, even though Nikita Kucherov logged six shots and Montreal's Ivan Demidov had five.

Goncalves jabbed in his shots on a two pokes after getting a nice pass from Dominic James.

Sunday's game has not announced a starting time at Benchmark International Arena.

Saturday, 3 a.m.

When they pitch, they compete.

For the Tampa Bay Rays, it is as simple as that. On the nights their bullpen is weak, or their starting pitching does't clock, they can be had.

Ah, but when they pitch, the Rays are a pretty good baseball team.

The Rays played their eighth straight game giving up three runs or fewer Friday night, beating the San Francisco Giants 3-0. The Ryas have won seven of those games.

Shane McClanahan pitched six shutout innings and allowed just five hits. Ian Seymour, Cole Susler and Bryan Baker threw one shutout inning each. For Baker, it was his eighth save.

The Rays offense didn't hit it often, but they hit it a long way. Tampa Bay had just four hits of Giants' starter Robbie Ray, but they included solo home runs by Yandy Diaz and Junior Caminero and a double by Taylor Walls (who later scored on a sacrifice fly by Chandler Simpson).

Diaz left the game with tightness in his side and is day-to-day.

The Rays and Giants play again today at Tropicana Field at 6:10 p.m. Jesse Scholtens is expected to start for the Rays against Landon Roupp.

Thursday, 4 a.m.

From here, you can see the end.

From here if you are the Tampa Bay Lightning, you can see elimination. You can see the off-season. You can see ... nothingness.

After another close loss, the Tampa Bay Lightning is staring the end of their season, Montreal won Game five 3-2 and took a 3-2 edge in their NHL playoff series and now heads home on Friday night to try to close things out.

It was the second home loss in three tries for the Lightning.

The Bolts came back from 3-1 playoff deficits in 2004 (Calgary), 2011 (Pittsburgh), 2015 (Detroit) and 2022 (Toronto).

The Bolts got off 40 shots, but had trouble getting the puck past Montreal goalie Jakub Dobes.

The Bolts trailed 1-0 when Dominic James scored to tie the game. Eleven seconds later, however, Montreal's Kirby Dach scored to give the Canadiens the lead back.

This time, it was Jake Guentzel who tied it late in the second period. But 66 seconds into the third period, Alexandre Texier scored the winner on a manageable shot.

Friday night's game will begin at 7 p.m.