DENVER - Tampa Bay Lightning Head Coach Jon Cooper's message to his team before Friday's Stanley Cup Final Game 5 was play a game, win or lose, that you can say after you left everything you had out there.

The Lightning did just that, grinding out a 3-2 win to stave off elimination and send the series back to Tampa and a Game 6 on Sunday night.

"You just try to do what we can and grind it out and that's the way this team is wound and we're built to play games that are tight games like that," said captain Steven Stamkos. "We've had success in the playoffs playing that way and we don't want to change now." 

It started with the most unlikely of goal scorers, Jan Ruuta's first of the playoffs gave the Lightning an early spark and an early 1-0 lead.

"We've been in those situations the last couple of years," said Ruuta. "So, we know how to handle it and we showed it tonight."

But that was just the beginning of what the Bolts needed to do to win this game, the defending champs were setting the tone.

After Colorado tied the score in the second, Tampa Bay's struggling power play got another first when Nikita Kucherov scored his first goal of the series to give the Lightning a 2-1 lead.

An Avalanche goal tied it in the third, setting up more late period heroics from Ondrej Palat, who scored the game-winning goal with around six minutes remaining.

"A couple passes were made and then Heddy (Victor Hedman) wound up down low and I was just trying to get open, get lost a little bit," said Palat. "I was just trying to one time it, lucky enough it went in."​​

For Palat, it was his seventh career third-period postseason goal. Once again, when the Lightning needed it most, it was number 18 who delivered.

"He just does his job and he gets rewarded for it because of his effort," Cooper said. "Everybody in that room knows how much Palat has brought to this organization."

The two-time defending champs have won their third-straight elimination game this postseason, earning the right to keep the season alive and bring it back home.

"Sometimes you get caught looking ahead a little bit," Stamkos said. "This crew did a great job of focusing on the present and that was to come in here, in a very tough place to play and just play a solid game and give ourselves a chance. That's what we did tonight."

For Cooper, it's no surprise the series has taken another turn.

"You look at this series, was it meant to go six or seven? Damn right it was. There's two damn good hockey teams here and were looking forward to seeing you guys in two nights."

Ondrej Palat's family held a watch party in his hometown in the Czech Republic for Game 5. It was 2:00 a.m. and 80 people attended. Now, he has earned an even bigger watch party in his adopted hometown Sunday night in Tampa.