Rangers in familiar position following Game 5 loss in Eastern Final

NEW YORK --The left side of the net was open, the puck was at his stick, a chance to give the New York Rangers the lead late in the third period was right there for the taking.

Ryan Strome missed.
The puck slid under the center's stick and through the bottom of the left circle with 5:48 remaining in the third period.
"We'll connect next game," Rangers forward Andrew Copp said.
Next game could be the Rangers' last. They're facing elimination again.
Ondrej Palat scored on a deflection of Mikhail Sergachev's seeing-eye wrist shot into traffic from the right point at 18:10 of the third period and Brandon Hagel scored an empty-net goal 51 seconds later to give the Tampa Bay Lightning a 3-1 win in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Final at Madison Square Garden on Thursday.
The Lightning have won three in a row to take a 3-2 lead in the best-of-7 series.
The Rangers' eight-game home winning streak is over and Strome's missed opportunity to score off a pretty passing sequence from Artemi Panarin and Copp could haunt them through the offseason if they don't find a way to win Game 6 at Amalie Arena on Saturday.
New York is 5-0 when facing elimination in the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season.
"We just couldn't seem to get that next goal," said defenseman Ryan Lindgren, the Rangers' lone goal scorer in Game 5.
RELATED: [Complete Rangers vs. Lightning series coverage]
Lindgren also had a chance to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead with 9:37 remaining in the third. He came around the right post with the puck and tried to stuff it in, but Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy had his left pad in position to make the save.
"I think you can always say in a game you can get more, but the chances were there," defenseman Jacob Trouba said. "The goalie made some good saves. It was a tight game, could go either way, and that's what makes it more frustrating for us, I think. It's not like we're getting the doors blown off us. We're in these games. We're right there."
Trouba felt that way after back-to-back losses in Games 3 and 4 at Amalie Arena too, but that seemed like more optimistic lip service.
Even coach Gerard Gallant said after Game 4 that the Rangers did not pay the price to win. They lost 4-1.
He said they were outplayed in Game 3 and had they won they would have stolen it. They lost 3-2 and were outshot 52-30.
Game 5 was different.
"I thought we played well, well enough to win," Gallant said, "and it didn't go our way."
The Rangers can win Game 6 if they play the same way as they did in Game 5.
They managed the puck well, springing leaks only a handful of times for odd-man rushes the other way. They were disciplined, giving the Lightning only two power play opportunities on hooking penalties in the second period by defensemen Braden Schneider and K'Andre Miller.
They killed both off.
Gallant said he felt the Rangers deserved more than the one power play they got for a Lightning too many men on the ice penalty at 7:48 of the second period, but it wasn't necessarily a complaint.
"In saying that, I thought they had an excellent game," Gallant said of the officials. "They let the teams play."

And if the puck doesn't slide under Strome's stick, or Vasilevskiy doesn't have his left pad in a perfect spot to stop Lindgren, the way the Rangers played in Game 5 could have been good enough to put them in the driver's seat, up 3-2, a win away from the Stanley Cup Final.
"We played a sound hockey game," Gallant said. "It's tough to lose like that at the end."
The problem is that's the second time in three games the Rangers have given up a game-winning goal in the last two minutes of the third period. They had a lead in both games.
Palat also did it to them in Game 3, scoring off a pass from Nikita Kucherov to give Tampa Bay a 3-2 lead at 19:18 of the third period.
New York led 2-0 in Game 3.
It led 1-0 in Game 5 on Lindgren's goal at 10:29 of the second period.
"We're playing pretty good and it's a really, really tight series," Copp said, "So we just have to make that extra play at the end of the game to be the difference."
Said Trouba, "As much as it stings now you can look at that and know that you're right there and you can go into Tampa, you can win a game."
It's over if they don't.