Sunday, 4 a.m.
For a team that may be running out of time, the Tampa Bay Lightning was betrayed by the clock on Saturday night.
With 60 seconds to play in regulation, the Bolts gave up the tying goal to the Toronto Maple Leafs' Ryan O'Reilly Sunday night.
And with 45 seconds to play in overtime, the Bolts gave up the winning goal to Morgan Rielly.
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Yeah, the Leafs really clocked the Bolts in Sunday night's 4-3 overtime win. Although Tampa Bay played a solid game, much better than their Game Two loss, they now must win three of the remaining four games in the series to advance.
The Bolts had their chances. They had a goal disallowed when the officials judged that goalie Igor Samsonov had frozen the puck underneath him. The Lightning argued it was still moving.
"I have zero idea why he blew the whistle," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "It was shocking. There were 20,000 people sitting there.
I don’t know what the ref had to gain by blowing the whistle. It’s not why we lost the game, but I don’t get it. I can sit here and go through the list of quick whistles. That has to be No. 1 in the league. It was bouncing all over the place."
The Bolts were quick to remind everyone that they trailed 2-1 in last year's series, too, before rallying to win.
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"It was probably the best game we’ve played in the series," Lightning forward Steven Stamkos said. "If we play like that, I like our chances. We probably deserved to win. We did deserves to win."
The Bolts fell behind 1-0 and 2-1, but rallied on goals by Anthony Cirelli and Brandon Hagel. Darren Raddysh broke the tie to give the Bolts a 3-2 lead.
The Leafs pulled their goalie in the late stages, and it paid off.
The teams play again Monday night (7:30 p.m.) at Amalie Arena.
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