Panthers rally late in 3rd to defeat Lightning in Game 4 of Eastern 1st Round | NHL.com

The Panthers trailed 2-1 before scoring twice to take a 3-2 lead with 3:36 remaining in the game.

Florida leads the best-of-7 series 3-1. Game 5 will be in Tampa on Wednesday (7:30 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, SCRIPPS, ESPN2, TVAS2, SN360).

“We finished well, and it’s nice to give our fans that win,” said Jones, who gave Florida the late lead. “We’re up 3-1 and understand the job is not finished. Both teams played hard tonight, and there were a lot of ups and downs. They scored two back to back, and we stuck with it pretty well and got the win at the end of the day.’’

Anton Lundell had a goal and an assist, and Carter Verhaeghe also scored for the Panthers, the No. 3 seed from the Atlantic Division. Sergei Bobrovsky made 18 saves.

“We haven’t had a lot of these this year,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “They have been grinders. It has been tough. We had key guys out of the lineup … so, we don’t have the history of the comeback and that’s a little tougher. It was really important mentally to come back.’’

Mitchell Chaffee and Erik Cernak each scored, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 19 saves for the Lightning, the No. 2 seed from the Atlantic.

Tampa Bay was trying to match the Panthers by winning each of its first two road playoff games in this series.

“It was tough losing the first two at home, so, we have massive challenges ahead of us,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper, whose team beat the Panthers 5-1 in Game 3 on Saturday afternoon. “For 115 minutes, we passed every test possible. We just had a tough 11 seconds there at the end of the game. It’s unfortunate. We played well enough to win both games, and came up a little short.’’

Ekblad tied the score 2-2 at 16:13 by getting to a Sam Reinhart rebound in the slot and beating Vasilevskiy over his glove.

Florida then took a 3-2 lead at 16:24 when Jones’ point shot went off Ryan McDonagh’s skate and under Vasilevskiy’s right arm before bouncing over the goal line.