Associated Press

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 33 shots and the Tampa Bay Lightning came back to beat the Florida Panthers 5-1 Saturday to cut their deficit in the first-round series to 2-1.

Tampa Bay’s offense came alive, with goals from Jake Guentzel, Brayden Point, Nick Paul and Luke Glendening. Anthony Cirelli added an empty-netter with five minutes left, and Nikita Kucherov had three assists.

The Lightning will try to even things up in Game 4 on Monday at Sunrise. The Panthers, however, are 5-0 after taking a 2-0 lead in a playoff series.

Paul gave the Lightning their first lead of the series when he slipped a shot just inside the pad of Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky in the second period. Guentzel made it a two-goal lead just 21 seconds into the third before the Lightning pulled away later in the period.

Matthew Tkachuk scored for the Panthers, his third of the series. Bobrovsky finished with 17 saves.

Vasilevskiy had given up seven goals in the first two games but was huge on Saturday. He bounced back from an early Panthers punch and withstood a flurry of Florida shots in the second and third.

Tkachuk, who scored twice in the opener, got on the board 2:43 into the game when he tapped a feed from Sam Bennett past Vasilevskiy, giving the star his 20th playoff goal with the Panthers. The Lightning responded when Guentzel’s shot bounced off Point and past Bobrovsky later in the first to give the NHL’s highest-scoring team in the regular season its first goal in nearly five periods.

The Lightning were playing without forward Brandon Hagel, who was suspended for the game after a hard hit on Aleksander Barkov that knocked the Florida captain out of the final 10 minutes of Game 3. Barkov played on Saturday, along with Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad, who returned from a 20-game suspension for violating the NHL and NHL Players’ Association’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/NHL

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