from Erik Erlendsson of the Tampa Tribune,

Dreams of capturing silver took on a tarnished feel for the Lightning.

Despite the return of goaltender Ben Bishop to the net, Tampa Bay’s offense again came up dry in a 2-1 loss to Chicago in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final. The Lightning trail the best-of-seven series 3-2 heading into Game 6 in Chicago on Monday.

For just the second time this postseason Tampa Bay has dropped consecutive games and will need to avoid the first three-game losing streak of the season to force a decisive Game 7 back in Tampa on Wednesday.

Antoine Vermette scored the game-winning goal early in the third period to break a 1-1 tie as Corey Crawford made it stand up, finishing with 31 saves to help bring Chicago to the brink of winning a third Stanley Cup in a six-year span, and the chance to do it on home ice for the first time since 1938.

Bishop, a question mark to start the game after he missed Game 4 with an undisclosed injury, finished with 27 saves but his costly decision to come out to the circles to try to play a puck led to Chicago’s opening goal after he collided with teammate Victor Hedman allowing Patrick Sharp to skate in alone for an empty net goal at 6:11 of the first period.

“That’s the difference in the game,’’ Bishop said. “You obviously don’t want to make those mistakes at this stage of the game, but it happened and that’s unfortunate. The puck came off the boards there and I thought I could hit (Steven Stamkos), kind of made eye contact with him and Heddy didn’t see me, obviously. They were changing and I thought I could catch (Stamkos) up there. Maybe it was a little too far to venture but it’s just unfortunate we ran into each other.’’

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