Lightning find 'mental fortitude,' win Game 5 of Stanley Cup Final

DENVER -- The Stanley Cup was in the building, ready to be awarded to the Colorado Avalanche. The fans roared for it all night, hoping for a celebration, anticipating one.

"WE WANT THE CUP!" they chanted. "WE WANT THE CUP!"
But the Tampa Bay Lightning weren't ready to give it up. Forward Ondrej Palat scored the go-ahead goal with 6:22 left in the third period, and the two-time defending champions stayed alive with a
3-2 win in Game 5
of the Stanley Cup Final at Ball Arena on Friday.
"The mental fortitude you have to have to not buckle in the environment we were just in, to play the type of game we did, there's a reason the players have] got a couple rings on their fingers," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said.
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And so, now we have a Game 6 at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Sunday (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, CBC, SN, TVAS) with the Avalanche's lead in the best-of-7 series down to 3-2. Win at home, and the Lightning will force a Game 7 in Denver on Tuesday.
"I think when you look at this series, was it meant to go six or seven? Damn right it was," Cooper said. "It's two damn good hockey teams here."
It didn't look like this series was going to go six or seven games Wednesday, though.
The Lightning lost 3-2 in overtime at home. Instead of tying the series 2-2, they had fallen behind 3-1. They seemed overwhelmed by the Avalanche's speed and special teams. They were beaten up. You had to wonder if, playing their 12th playoff series in three seasons, they were out of gas.
Then again, this is a team that became the second to win back-to-back titles since the NHL introduced the salary cap in 2005-06, after the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017. This is a team that was down 3-2 in the Eastern Conference First Round to the Toronto Maple Leafs, down 2-0 in the Eastern Conference Final to the New York Rangers and came back to win each time.
The Lightning were not worried about losing, not even forward Corey Perry, who lost to them in the Cup Final with the Dallas Stars in 2020 and the Montreal Canadiens in 2021 before signing with them as a free agent July 29. They were focused on the process.
"It's not about, 'What if? What if?'" Perry said. "It's about what you have to do."

Forward Pat Maroon, who won the Cup with the St. Louis Blues in 2019 before winning it with the Lightning the past two years, said it wasn't about confidence. It was about work ethic.
"Like [Cooper] said, 'If this is going to be our last game, make sure when you go home tonight, you can lay on your pillow and you can say you worked hard and gave everything you've got,'" Maroon said.
That the Lightning did. They didn't panic when leads of 1-0 and 2-1 evaporated. They gave the Avalanche only two power plays and killed them both. They scored a 4-on-3 power-play goal themselves. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 35 saves, and he's now 4-0 with a 1.75 goals-against average and .945 save percentage over the past three postseasons when facing elimination.
"That's how we want to play," Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. "We know the dynamic skill set that they have. If we can stay disciplined, stay out of the penalty box, try to eliminate their skill as much as we can … We can't eliminate it every shift, because they're that good, but you just try to do what we can and grind it out.
"That's the way this team has won, and we're built to play games that are tight like that. We've had success in the playoffs playing that way, and we don't want to change now. So that was more like it, and we'll look to continue that."
For now, it's one win. That's it. The Avalanche still have two chances to clinch.
"We extended the season," Stamkos said. "That's what we wanted to do. We talked about one game at a time. It was a grind, but we found a way. Great effort, and now we've got to do it again."
But if the Lightning do it again, they will have won back-to-back games entering Game 7, when anything can happen. The pressure will be on the Avalanche to win at home and not become the first team to blow a 3-1 lead and lose the Cup Final since the 1942 Detroit Red Wings blew a 3-0 lead and lost to the Maple Leafs.
"You can tell in that room that there's still hockey to be played," Perry said. "We want to push this and see where this thing goes. There's no give in that room."