The Lightning needed to change the narrative of the Eastern Conference finals.
After being dominated and down-right embarrassed on home ice in Game 3, Tampa Bay completely changed the way the game was played in Game 4.
And now, a berth to the Stanley Cup Final comes down to a best-of-three with Pittsburgh holding home ice advantage.
Tampa Bay allowed 48 shots on goal in a 4-2 loss in Game 3, and result that was not that close. That needed to change if the Lightning had any chance to extend the series.
And it changed in a hurry.
Tampa Bay changed around the line combinations for the start of the game, reuniting an energy line with Ryan Callahan, Valtteri Filppula and J.T. Brown. It paid immediate dividends as Callahan tipped a Victor Hedman shot past Matt Murray 27 seconds in to the game to get the home fans fired up in a hurry.
"That's the start we needed,'' Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. "You can't sit here and say you want your team to make a push. You want them to say, okay, let's make a stand. We got embarrassed at home in Game 3, let's make a stand. And you can't ask for anything more than Callahan scoring the first shift. Twenty-seven seconds in, everybody -- I don't think anybody sat down yet, and they didn't need to. You can just -- the energy in the building after we scored, it just pushed us, and we carried that through.''
Andrej Sustr provided a two goal lead late in the second and Tampa Bay ended up with 18 shots on goal in the first. Goals by Jonathan Drouin and Tyler Johnson in the second period pushed the lead to 4-0 as the Lightning had 30 shots on goal through 40 minutes, surpassing their entire individual game total from each of the first three games of the series.
"When you score in the first shift, it helps, and it gets the team going,'' Callahan said. "Overall, that was our main concentration was to make sure we had a good start. I thought we had a really good start in Game 3, and we let it slip after about ten minutes of that game. It was important for us to continue that push and continue that momentum. I thought we did a good job of that.''
Pittsburgh made a game of it in the third, cutting it to 4-3 with 6:52 on goals from Phil Kessel, Evgeni Malkin and Chris Kunitz. But even as chaotic as it felt toward the end, Tampa Bay never felt uneasy in the closing minutes.
"It doesn't matter how you get there,'' Cooper said. "Sure, we elevated the heart rate of 18,000 people in the building tonight. So shame on anybody if they left early, but it was -- we felt we deserved to be where we were. "I didn't think we ever lost control of the game. And give Pittsburgh credit. They played loose. They played hard, and they tried to make a game of it, which they did. But I never, ever was sitting there saying this game's in trouble for us. And I don't think everybody on the bench thought that, and the result ended up saying the same thing.''
Now, it's about understanding what they did to even up the series and moving forward.
"We have to turn the page as well because this game, it's over, and now it's the best of three,'' Cooper said. "We can't carry this over and say, oh, well, just because we won Game 4, we're going to win Game 5. Turn the page and get back to what we're doing.''