Burns: 3 Things we learned from a missed opportunity

The Florida Panthers were a team on a mission in Game 5, their season on the line and facing elimination Monday at BB&T Center.
Tampa Bay, trying to close out the First Round series in five games and avoid giving Florida any glimmer of hope or momentum, couldn't match the Panthers' desperation level.
The Lightning scored the opening goal just 53 seconds into Game 5 but couldn't sustain that effort, the Panthers scoring four unanswered goals to win 4-1 and force a Game 6 at AMALIE Arena on Wednesday.
Tampa Bay, up 3-2, still owns a lead in the best-of-seven series.

Spencer Knight made his first career playoff start and was impressive in net for the Panthers, stopping all 36 shots he faced after giving up the opening goal on the Bolts' first shot.
The Lightning took too many penalties in the contest, a theme for them so far this postseason, and lost that early momentum as they were forced to kill too often. The Bolts couldn't generate much offensively in the second and third periods, the Panthers jamming them up in the neutral zone and not allowing them to play their typical speed game.
"We're trying to close out the series and they're trying to extend it," Lightning center Brayden Point said. "Both teams should be desperate here. I thought they were more tonight. We've got to be better in Game 6. We've got to bring that intensity. We've got to bring that desperation a little more."
Tampa Bay will refocus for Game 6 with another chance to close out the series and move into the Second Round for the eighth time in franchise history.
"There's no point in dwelling on the past now," Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. "We have a 3-2 series lead. We weren't able to close it out tonight, and we'll expect a better effort from our group next game."

1. THE START YOU LIKE TO SEE
If Tampa Bay was drawing up an ideal start, the one the Lightning got in Game 5 would have been pretty close to it.
Maybe the Lightning would have opted to put a few more pucks past Florida goalie Spencer Knight, but all in all, the way the Bolts began Game 5 was a perfect way to begin a potentially series-clinching contest.
Before the first minute had elapsed, the Lightning were on the board. On a scoring play that started from a face-off win in their own zone, the Bolts quickly moved the puck up the ice, Ryan McDonagh working the puck over to Blake Coleman, who saw lots of space in front of him and maneuvered his way up the right wing. Coleman dumped the puck off the wall and up ahead into an area where he could skate back onto it and elude a pair of Panthers defending.
Now on a 2-on-1 with Ross Colton crashing down on the left wing, Coleman backhanded a pass across the ice for Colton to one-time into the back of the net on Tampa Bay's first shot of the game, Colton scoring his second goal in the last three games.
"We had a great start today, so we just have to manufacture that same start we had for three periods," Stamkos said. "We talked about this from the beginning: That's a really good hockey team over there. They weren't going to just roll over and die. It's two really good hockey teams going at it. We knew it was going to be a tough series from the beginning."
The Lightning continued to pressure Florida's rookie goalie throughout the opening period. Tampa Bay registered 22 shots on net in the first, matching a franchise record for shots in a playoff period set previously during the third period of Game 1 of the 2020 Stanley Cup Final.
The Bolts, however, came undone a bit by the number of penalties they took. After going up 1-0, they were whistled for three-straight infractions, which stifled the offense they had been generating and allowed the Panthers to claw their way back into the contest.
"I thought the first period was really good and then after that I don't think we generated many scoring chances to be honest," Stamkos said. "We'll review the tape, and we know we'll have to be better. We're going to have to grind a little harder in those tough areas to create some second and third chances. I didn't think we had that many tonight."

2. STUCK IN NEUTRAL
Tampa Bay creates a lot of its offense by playing fast through the neutral zone and entering the offensive zone with possession to get a team on its heels.
The Lightning weren't able to play nearly fast enough in Game 5, however, the Panthers jamming up the Bolts in the neutral zone and not letting them get their speed game going.
And they were forced to dump the puck into the offensive zone and chase way more than they like. The forecheck wasn't able to create nearly enough turnovers either.
"I think we just played slow tonight," Stamkos said. "We talked about that at intermission. We weren't coming back and supporting the D. We were standing still too much and that didn't allow the D to jump in the play and they weren't getting up in the play."
After firing 22 shots at Knight in the first period, the Lightning only took 15 shots through the final two periods and had just six in the third period when they trailed by a pair of goals for most of the frame.
Florida tied the game about six minutes into the second period when a face-off win came back to MacKenzie Weeger, who had a clear lane to shoot and fired a wrister over the glove of Lightning netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy to level the score 1-1.
Then a couple minutes before the second intermission, Aleksander Barkov found Mason Marchment all alone in the slot and sent a puck his way from behind the net to one-time past Vasilevskiy and put Florida in front for good.
"Giving up that second one late and now we're chasing it a bit and they've got a chance to defend, they did a good job," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. "They fed off the crowd. They played D. We had a couple good looks, didn't go in, but if we're going to win, if you want to win a playoff series, you can't be on and off. We've got to be on our game for the entire game. Our second wasn't our best and we paid for it."
The Lightning gave up an early power-play goal in the third period to fall behind 3-1 and were chasing the game the rest of the way. Despite needing two goals, the Bolts just couldn't get anything going, their game stuck in neutral while the Panthers were able to focus on protecting their net.
"I think we just hung onto it a little too long and they got into a defensive structure and they're good," Point said. "Once they're in that structure, they're tough to get around. Their D have good gaps, their forwards come back hard, it's tough to skate in. Once they're in that structure, it's tough. I think we've got to play a little bit faster to catch them on their heels a little bit and hopefully get more zone entries with possession."

3. PENALTIES SWING MOMENTUM
Despite Tampa Bay's strong opening period, the Lightning took three-consecutive penalties midway through the first that threw them off their game.
The penalty kill did an outstanding job on those first three Florida power plays to keep the Panthers off the board. The PK blocked a number of shots, got sticks in passing lanes to thwart potential scoring chances and leaned on Vasilevskiy to make some key stops.
But those penalties seemed to suck some of the life from the Lightning and lifted the Panthers, who started to get a foothold into the contest as a result.
"They're killing us," Cooper said of his team's numerous penalties. "It's killing our game, killing our momentum. I thought we did a really good job getting through that first period up a goal. But you just can't keep giving them freebees. It can swing, not really as much momentum of games, but it swings momentum of pockets in games. It can be hard to get back at times. We've definitely got to take less penalties. It's killing us right now, and for whatever reason, they must not take very many. They do a good job because it seems like we're the only ones taking them."
The Lightning had just one real power-play opportunity, that coming late in the first period when they held the puck in the offensive zone for the entire two minutes and even a few moments after the penalty to Marchment expired. But they passed up open opportunities looking for better ones and weren't able to find that Grade-A scoring chance they were looking for.
Late in the second period, Luke Schenn was forced to hold Anthony Duclair after Mikhail Sergachev's blocked shot in the offensive zone nearly led to a breakaway going the other way.
Just 35 seconds into the third, with the power play carrying over into the final frame, Patric Hornqvist got a tip on a Barkov one-timer to score, and the Panthers were in control up 3-1.
"I think we bit ourselves in the butt a little bit in terms of taking too many penalties," Stamkos said. "We had a really good start and then we get that early goal which is great, get some momentum, get a boost and then we take three-straight penalties. We talked about before the game trying to stay disciplined, and we need to do a better job of that going into the next game. I think we had one power play all game and had to kill off four or five. That's not a recipe against a really good team and it cost us again in the third, they score on the power play right away to make it a two-goal game. We'll have to be more disciplined next game."