Lightning coach Jon Cooper came to Boston with a plan to steal back the home-ice advantage that the Bruins took away with their Game 1 win in Tampa.

Now he has bigger goals in mind.

”We can’t exhale Chris Herndon Color Rush Jersey ,” Cooper said on Thursday, a day after the Lightning beat Boston 4-1 to open a 2-1 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals. ”Just because we picked one up on them, we want to make it where we have three chances to knock them out. When you have that chance, you can’t let it slide.”

Since winning the opener, the Bruins have lost two in a row. On Wednesday night, Ondrej Palat scored twice in the first 3:19 of the game to give the Lightning a lead it never relinquished.

”They outworked us last night, there’s no doubt about it,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said.

Game 4 is Friday night (7 p.m. EDT Thomas Vanek Red Wings Jersey , NBCSN).

MIRROR IMAGE

Vegas and San Jose each have a home shutout and a road overtime win through four games of their second-round series. Now it has become a best-of-three for a spot in the Western Conference Final starting with Game 5 (10 p.m. EDT, NBCSN). The Sharks have turned things around completely from Game 1, when they were constantly a step behind the speedier Golden Knights in a 7-0 loss.

San Jose has done a much better job limiting Vegas’ chances since then.

”That 7-0 game was not really us out there,” forward Eric Fehr said. ”We changed a lot of things. We came out flat in that game. I think we’ve done a good job of reeling it in and playing the way we can play. That was a game we just threw in the garbage and turned the page.”

Now the Golden Knights will try to do the same after getting thoroughly outplayed in a 4-0 loss in Game 4.

”It’s a good series, there’s no easy night,” goalie Marc-Andre Fleury said. ”Nobody thought it was going to be an easy series either. We’re in good shape, 2-2, going home.”

SHUFFLING

Cassidy fiddled with his lines in practice on Thursday as he tried to find more offense for a team that seemed to have plenty of it in the first-round series against the Maple Leafs. With Brad Marchand and Jake DeBrusk sitting out of practice – Cassidy said he expects them to play on Friday night – Danton Heinen skated with Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak on the first line and Ryan Donato got time with David Krejci on the second.

After scoring 28 goals in seven games against Toronto and six in the Round 2 opener http://www.49ersauthorizedshops.com/authentic-jonathan-cooper-jersey , Boston was held to a single goal each in back-to-back games.

”We’ll probably tinker,” Cassidy said. ”I’m not going to tell you who’s going in or who’s going out, because we’ve got to get the healthy guys sorted out first.”

ROOKIES IN THE BOOKS

Lightning forward Anthony Cirelli was the 23rd different rookie to score at least one goal in 56 NHL playoff games this year. That’s already more than in all of last year’s postseason. The NHL record is 38 in 1981, but over the past 30 years the most was 28, in 1990 and again in ’92.

Boston’s Jake DeBrusk has six this year, leading all rookies. Minnesota North Stars forward Dino Ciccarelli scored 14 goals in ’81, the rookie record for a postseason. Penguins forward Jake Guentzel scored 13 last year and matched Ciccarelli’s point total.

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AP Sports Writer Josh Dubow contributed to this story from San Jose, California.

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Kings are facing a must-win scenario in Game 3 of their first-round Stanley Cup Playoffs series against the Vegas Golden Knights at Staples Center on Sunday night.

The Kings wasted a record-setting performance by goaltender Jonathan Quick in their 2-1 double-overtime loss Friday night at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. With the Kings down three of their regular defenseman including Drew Doughty Markus Wheaton Color Rush Jersey , who was suspended for a hit on Vegas’ William Carrier in Game 1, Quick stopped 54 shots to set a franchise record for most saves in a playoff game.

It was all for naught as Erik Haula ended the match at 15:23 of the second overtime to give Vegas a 2-0 series lead. Paul La Due registered his first career playoff goal with a power play tally for Los Angeles.

Despite entering the series with an advantage at the center position with veterans Anze Kopitar and Jeff Carter, Los Angeles has been stifled by the Golden Knights tenacity and speed. Vegas has prevented traffic in front of goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, allowing him to see the Kings’ attempts, limiting the number of dangerous opportunities at the Golden Knights net.

Fleury has stopped 58 of 59 shots, a statistic that if maintained will lead Vegas into the next round.

Los Angeles coach John Stevens minimized the tough double-overtime loss by saying his team now has to replicate what Vegas did in winning its first two home games.

“There’s momentum in a series,” Stevens said. “You can lose 7-0 the first night like the Philadelphia Flyers did and come back to win and it’s still 1-1. They won two games at home, a lot of people would say they’re supposed to win at home.


“Vegas has been a good team at home all year Baker Mayfield Browns Jersey , so now we get to go home and get to work. It’s not devastating. We come in here to win a hockey game and we didn’t win. Because of double overtime, you just expend a lot of energy. It doesn’t matter if you win in regulation or in quadruple overtime. It still counts as one.”

Carter knows it is no easy task to beat the Golden Knights, who resemble far more like a Stanley Cup contender than the expansion team they are.

“They are a speedy, highly skilled team,” Carter said. “They have no holes in their games and we need to be far better to create chances.”

The Kings will be boosted by the return of the former Norris Trophy winner Doughty and a possible return by another veteran defenseman in Jake Muzzin, who missed the first two games with an upper-body injury.

With Vegas in command of the series, coach Gerard Gallant expects Los Angeles’ best game of the series as his team attempts to put a stranglehold on their inaugural postseason series and wonders what effect the double-overtime affair will have on both teams.

“The Kings are going to come out real hard,” Gallant said. “I don’t know what Game 2 is going to take out of both teams. I don’t think the pace will be quite the same as it was because the guys are pretty tired and beat up from five periods of hockey on Friday. They are going back to their building and I am sure they are going to come out hard and play real hard. Los Angeles is a great hockey team. It’s a great series so far.”

Haula http://www.lionsauthorizedshops.com/authentic-frank-ragnow-jersey , whose game-winning goal was his first career overtime score, mapped out the strategy in the hopes of moving one win away from a series victory Sunday night.

“We just keep playing the same way,” Haula said. “We did our job at home and now we go there and go to their building. It’s going to be harder. They are going to be better and we know that. We have to be better and it’s going to be a grind for sure. They are going to come out really hard in their home building and that’s what you can expect. We have to be a little bit better again.”

Golden Knights defenseman John Merrill said he believes if his team maintains the style of play that has been problematic for Los Angeles, his team can emerge with a third straight win.

“We have done a lot of good things in the first two games of the series,” Merrill said. “We are a fast team and when we have everyone skating it is a very good thing for us. We need to continue to do the things that helped us win and add a little more to it.”

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