Chicago Blackhawks lose lead, fall 3-2 late in overtime

The rebuilding Blackhawks were taught a valuable lesson during a heartbreaking 3-2 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday night at the United Center.

Now we'll see how much they learn from it.

After completely dominating the defending champs for the first 40 minutes - and taking a 2-0 lead on goals by Ryan Carpenter and Alex DeBrincat - the Hawks came out on their heels to begin the third.

And they paid dearly as Tampa Bay scored twice in three minutes to tie things up.

The Hawks stopped the bleeding and earned a point but were nonetheless bitterly disappointed in allowing Tampa Bay to prevail on Alex Killorn's goal that crossed the line with 0.1 seconds remaining.

"We've got to figure out how to win those games," said DeBrincat, whose shot with 3:08 remaining in OT hit the post. "We can't give up points like that."

Said Kevin Lankinen, who made 31 saves: "It's frustrating for sure. "We played a really good game. We showed we can play really well against top teams in this league. We were close. Obviously tough bounce at the end."

That's for sure, as Killorn deflected Victor Hedman's shot into the net.

But coach Jeremy Colliton was more upset about how the Hawks (12-7-5) allowed the Lightning (16-4-1) to get back in the game in the first place. Especially after his team was so good in the first two periods. They anticipated passes, won puck battles, blocked shots and hustled like every five seconds was life or death.

But that all changed when the third began.

"I'm more focused on, how are we going to compete with top teams? How are we going to join that group?" Colliton said. "And we were right there for most of the night. Loved how our team was playing.

"But you've got to finish the job. There's a lot of positives and we'll take those with us. We weren't quite ready to do what it takes the whole night."

Carpenter opened the scoring short-handed at 7:24 of the second period and was set up off a great hustle play by Brandon Hagel. It was Carpenter's third goal in four games and it ended Andrei Vasilevskiy's franchise-record shutout streak at 228 minutes, 9 seconds.

Less than seven minutes later, DeBrincat deflected Patrick Kane's long blast to make it 2-0.

Tampa came out sizzling in the third, though, getting a short-handed goal from Cirelli at 1:04 and the tying marker from Steven Stamkos at 2:55.

"They came out with desperation right from the penalty kill," Colliton said. "They were all over us and we were playing at 70 percent."

Colliton expects Jon Cooper's squad to be even better in the rematch Friday. But he also expects his team to respond the right way after an awfully tough defeat.

"We're not gonna get where we want to be as a team if we don't," Colliton said. "So as a team we challenge ourselves. If we don't expect to rise to the challenge, I don't know what we're doing."