I’m going to get something off my chest here real quick, but I just want to restate once again that this game should have been played earlier in the day, like 5 p.m. At one point early in the second period, there as a smattering of cheers, but nothing was going on on the ice to warrant the outburst. Then somebody called down to me to say that Evan Longoria had just hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the first to tie the ALCS at 2-2. Then, later in the period the home run was shown on the video screen, which resulted in one of the loudest cheers of the night, outside of Vinny Lecavalier’s goal.

I still don’t think it was right to put the sports fans of Tampa Bay into a predicament where they had to choose between the two games, they should be able to watch both. And I still think the NHL should have stepped in and done the right thing. There are a lot of empty seats here tonight, although I’m sure it will be announced as an official sell out. But I can tell you, there’s plenty of blue seats that are open. And as I type this, I had to look up because another outbreak of unwarrented cheering as B.J. Upton hit his fourth home run of the playoffs to tie the game 3-3.

As far as the second period, it looked like Tampa Bay took their foot off the pedal just slightly. They did get a five-on-three power play goal by Vinny Lecavalier - his first of the year - and juding from the power behind that shot, I think Lecavalier’s shoulder is doing pretty good. That was a rocket shot.

But the parade to the penalty box caught up with the Lightning. Ryan Malone was called for consecutive penalties at 11:25 and 16:27 while Jamie Heward took a hooking call on Malone’s second penalty, giving the Hurricanes 1:02 of a two-man advantage. Jussi Jokinen took most of those minutes to kill it off and did an excellent job as Carolina was kept off the board and you could feel the momentum build off of it.

But then Matt Carle took a penalty with 22 seconds left in the period and you just knew that Carolina was going to make Tampa Bay pay. Sure enough, Rod Brind’Amour got a stick on a Joni Pitkanen shot with 8.7 seconds left to make it a 3-1 game.

And of note, Steven Stamkos has played only 2:57 of ice time tonight, most likely because of all the power play time the teams have combined for tonight. Stamkos took two shifts in the second period.