There were jagged rocks below.
The ground was giving way.
The Lightning was in trouble.
There were only 5½ minutes left to play, and things were looking desperate. The Red Wings led 2-0, a lead that looked insurmountable. The Tampa Bay Lightning had not scored in so long, they must have forgotten that a lamp lights when they do. The power play had reached absurd levels (0-for-17 in the Lightning’s three games).
In a few minutes, it seemed, Detroit was going to take a 3-1 lead in the series, and all the talk was going to be about where, exactly, the Wings might clinch as they pointed the Bolts toward the offseason.
And then here they came.
In one of the most memorable comebacks in franchise history, the Lightning pulled a lost game out of the fire Thursday night. The vaunted Triplets line, a fast, young line that dominated much of the offseason for the Lightning, scored three times ias quick knocks and a door, and just like, Tampa Bay had pulled even in the series.
Tyler Johnson scored. Andre Palat tied it 77 seconds later. Johnson won it with 3:25 gone in overtime.
And suddenly, the Lightning had snatched life out of a freefall.
The difference between success and failure in the NHL playoffs can be a thin as a skate. The Lightning looked for most of the night as if it was in trouble, especially when Ben Bishop batted a puck shot by Joakim Andersson into his own goal to make it 2-0 in the second period. At the time, the Red Wings looked bigger, older and luckier than the Bolts.
In all, the Red Wings had shut out Tampa Bay for 114 minutes and 26 seconds, and there was no reason to think Detroit would ever crack. Detroit goaltender Petr Mrazek is the only goalie to have shut out the Bolts this season, doing so once in the regular seaon and earlier this season.
For most of Thursday night, he seemed as if he was doing it again.
But the Lightning has been a quick-scoring team all year, and it has had a streak of stubbornness. It flashed quickly in the last eight minutes (counting overtime). And before this series is over, that may be remembered as the turning point.
“It’s how you finish, I guess,” Johnson said. “I don’t know exactly what happened. I don’t know how we got into a three-on-one, but we did.”
Oh, Tampa Bay still has some work to do. The fifth game is huge, because the team that wins that only has to win one of the final two games. But the Lightning has two of the next three at home, and it has the memory of this Houdini act going for it.
“Those guys took the game over in the last five minutes,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “We grew a couple of inches (on Johnson’s first goal). Our guys had a fire in them that was not going to be put out.”
Game Five is in Tampa Saturday. Six in Detroit Monday.
