Tam­pa Bay coach Jon Coop­er got his too-many-men penal­ty on Fri­day — and seem­ing­ly so much more.

With the Stan­ley Cup in the build­ing and the Avalanche a Game 5 vic­to­ry away from hoist­ing it, the Light­ning received sev­er­al favor­able calls inside Ball Are­na — includ­ing the afore­men­tioned too-many-men infrac­tion with 2:43 left in reg­u­la­tion that spoiled a chance at an extend­ed ral­ly for the Avs.

In all, Col­orado was assessed five minor penal­ties and two of them cost the Avalanche dear­ly in Tam­pa Bay’s 3–2 vic­to­ry to force Game 6 in Tam­pa on Sunday.

The Light­ning, who com­plained about a too-man-men non-call on Col­orado that led to the Avs’ over­time goal in Game 4, com­mit­ted three penal­ties and the Avs were 0‑for‑2 on the pow­er play.

“I’m not get­ting into that,” Col­orado cap­tain Gabe Lan­deskog said of the dis­crep­an­cies in penal­ties. “It’s some­thing they can con­tin­ue to do. We’re not doing that. We’re focus­ing on our game, watch some video tomor­row and fine-tune some things going into Tampa.”

Cale Makar’s out­stand­ing two-point per­for­mance was tar­nished by his trip­ping minor behind Colorado’s net at 6:58 of the sec­ond peri­od. In a 4‑on‑4 sequence, the star Avs defense­man turned to retrieve a loose puck he was des­tined to col­lect by try­ing to get his stick in front of him.

Instead, it got caught between the legs of Ondrej Palat, who fell to the ice. Makar joined team­mate J.T Com­pher in the penal­ty box and the Light­ning went on to score the only pow­er play goal of the game on a 4‑on‑3 advan­tage for a 2–1 lead.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet,” Makar said of the replay of his penal­ty. “It’s obvi­ous­ly to the ref’s dis­cre­tion. Varies game by game but at the end the day, we just got to bat­tle through it.”

When pressed about dis­cussing the penal­ty, Makar said: “I’m not here to talk about the refs. We have to bat­tle through that. It’s play­offs, there’s going to be dis­crep­an­cies game to game with dif­fer­ent peo­ple. It is what it is. You can’t get your emo­tions tak­en into that. For me, that (trip­ping penal­ty) doesn’t hap­pen very often but at the end of the day you have to refocus.”

Col­orado took the game’s first two penal­ties 3:13 and 6:58 of the first period.

The first ques­tion posed to Avalanche coach Jared Bed­nar was the dis­crep­an­cy in penal­ties, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Makar’s at 4‑on‑4. Giv­en that a 4‑on‑3 pow­er play is more dan­ger­ous than 5‑on‑4 because there’s more space in the zone because of few­er bod­ies, it was a big call.

“I didn’t love that call just because there was no intent there. I don’t even think he was check­ing that guy,” Bed­nar said. “Looked to me like he kind of tripped over a stick. It’s a tough one. They got their only pow­er-play goal on that one. So that hurt, stung a lit­tle bit, but it is what it is. You got to roll with the punches.”

Bed­nar did not have a prob­lem with the too-many-men penal­ty that stalled the Avs’ late threat to forced overtime.

“I think we left there ear­ly, yep. The puck kind of popped out to cen­ter ice, guys on the way to the bench and guys went out ear­ly,” he said.