Tampa: The Pittsburgh Penguins rebounded by shaking off a game five home loss to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-2 on Tuesday and force a game seven in their Eastern Conference play-off series.
The Penguins, who were facing elimination for the first time in the 2016 postseason after back-to-back losses, got goals from five different players in game six and 30 saves from rookie goalie Matt Murray.
“It wasn’t pretty, but it is good that we got win,” said Murray. “We dominated through the first two periods. They came back in the third.
“But we battled through it. We weathered the storm and got it done.”
Superstar forward Sidney Crosby led the offence with two points, including the eventual winning goal late in the second period.
Phil Kessel, with his ninth of the play-offs, defenceman Kris Letang, Bryan Rust and Nick Bonino, into an empty net, also scored for the Penguins, who went back to goaltender Murray on Tuesday.
The Penguins will be back on their home ice on Thursday — where Tampa Bay has won two of three games in this series — with the winner advancing to the Stanley Cup finals.
Rust got a breakaway goal with 2:08 left and Bonino added an empty-netter with 53 seconds left to pull away.
Crosby made it 3-0, scoring with just 25 seconds left in the second as he weaved past two Lightning players and then shot the puck through the legs of goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy for his sixth goal of the postseason.
Murray started the first four games of the series before being replaced by veteran Marc-Andre Fleury in the third period of game four. Fleury started game five which the Lightning won 4-3 in overtime.
“I just tried to play my heart out and stay in the moment,” Murray said. “They had a lot of traffic in front of the net. A couple of them I was just able to pick out at the very last second.”
Brian Boyle scored both goals for the Lightning, who are seeking to reach their second straight Stanley Cup final.
Tampa is trying to become the first team to make consecutive trips to the National Hockey League championship round since the Penguins and Detroit Red Wings did it in 2008 and 2009.
Tampa Bay looked to have taken the lead at one point early in the contest on a goal from Jonathan Drouin, but an official review showed that Drouin was offside so the goal was waived off.
