To paraphrase The Athletic’s Thomas Drance, the Tampa Bay Lightning permitted Game Two of the Stanley Cup Final to be far more interesting than it ever should have been. After building an early 3-0 lead, the Bolts lost almost all momentum, took some bad penalties, and allowed the Stars back into the contest. The result was a very tight 3-2 victory to even the Final at one game each.

Following a disappointing Game One result, it was promising to see Tampa respond with a quality first frame in Game Two. The Lightning picked up where they left off in the third period of the first game, and dominated the opening period in this one. Battling through dirty Dallas antics, the Lightning’s best players combined to score two power play goals in the latter half of the first. Kevin Shattenkirk then scored an even strength marker to make it a 3-0 lead, which almost looked insurmountable with how well the Lightning were playing. The power play was finally clicking. Dallas was generating very little. Anton Khudobin looked beatable. It should have been over right then and there.

Then, something changed. “Game management” from the officials provided the Stars with ample opportunity in the middle period, and they took advantage. Dallas looked phenomenal while a man up throughout the evening, confounding the Lightning defenders on most five-on-four shifts. Were it not for some very strong play from Andrei Vasilevskiy, the Stars could have easily found themselves in tie game before the end of the second. Joe Pavelski did manage to beat the Tampa goaltender with a tip-in goal to make it 3-1, but Vasilevskiy stopped 17 other Stars shots in that frame.

The Lightning settled back into a bit of a rhythm for most of the third period, winning the even strength battle over what could have been a series-defining 20 minutes. The unfortunate reality in hockey, though, is that sound play doesn’t always manifest itself as scoreboard success. That much was true in the third, as it was Dallas that scored a goal to pull within a single tally. It set up a mad dash for the finish line.

Again, as Drance suggested, the Lightning allowed things to remain interesting. Mikhail Sergachev looked to have scored a monumental 4-2 goal, but a careless stride by Blake Coleman resulted in it being called back as offside. Even as the game made its way into the final seconds, Barclay Goodrow missed a wide-open empty net for no apparent reason. The Hockey Gods were giving Dallas every opportunity to score the equalizer, but somehow Tampa Bay held on.

While far from perfect, especially in that second period, a win is a win. The Lightning have evened the Stanley Cup Final and have turned it into a best-of-five series. With speculation that Steven Stamkos is reasonably close to returning, the result tonight was a definite step in the right direction in the quest for a Cup.

From my perspective, and at a more granular level, the Lightning have a few things they can take away from this game:

- Firstly, the adjustments made to the power play, and specifically finding a way to open up the man in the slot, paid big dividends early on in this game; if the Lightning PP can continue to click, Dallas will have no choice but to tone it down with some of the borderline antics.

- Next, the Bolts should be content to know that they controlled the even strength portion of this game; they can put themselves in a very strong position to win the Cup if they can stay out of the box and keep a lethal Dallas man-advantage unit off the ice.

- And, lastly, the Lightning’s best players proved that they have the capability to take over this series; per Natural Stat Trick, Nikita Kucherov, Ondrej Palat, and Brayden Point all posted five-on-five shot attempt shares north of 75%, and five-on-five expected goal shares north of 80%. They're in "unstoppable" territory right now.

Combined, the lessons learned in this game should put the Lightning in a good position to earn another victory in Game Three. They just need to execute on the plan.

As always, thanks for reading.

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