Wounded Bishop leads Lightning to victory

While Ben Bishop battled pain, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks put on another fast, fun, classic performance in the Stanley Cup final.

Bishop gutted through an apparent injury to make 36 saves, and Cedric Paquette scored the winner with three minutes left as the Lightning beat the Blackhawks 3-2 in Game 3 on Monday night at United Center.

Tampa Bay takes a 2-1 series lead into Game 4 on Wednesday.

Bishop looked like he couldn’t move side-to-side or up-and-down at times. At others he was brilliant, getting the job done despite obviously labouring.

The Blackhawks beat him twice, a power-play goal by Brad Richards and one from the slot by Brandon Saad.

At the other end, Ryan Callahan, Ondrej Palat and Paquette scored on Corey Crawford (29 saves) to improve the Lightning’s road record in these playoffs to 8-3.

Victor Hedman made one of the game’s best heads-up plays by hitting Callahan perfectly at the blue line with a slap pass from inside his own goal line at 5:09. Callahan finished by firing top shelf on Crawford to open the scoring.

More than 10 minutes of complete Blackhawks domination followed. As Bishop fought through pain moving side to side and getting up and down, Chicago took 15 straight shots on net.

One of them beat Bishop. Richards bombed away from the point on the power play, and with Andrew Shaw screening, tied the score 14:22 in.

With Bishop fighting through the pain, the Lightning got caught on for a long shift in the third period that led to Chicago’s go-ahead goal. Hossa fed a wide-open Saad between the faceoff circles for his seventh of the playoffs at 4:14. The lead was shortlived, as Palat poked a loose puck in at the right post just 13 seconds later. Fans hadn’t stopped cheering by the time the Lightning were celebrating.

Hedman’s brilliant night continued as he skated circles around the Blackhawks in the offensive zone and fed Paquette for the winner at 16:49 of the third.