SUNRISE — The Florida Panthers once again had a chance to clinch their first Stanley Cup, and they blew it.

Jumping out to a three-goal lead, the Edmonton Oilers held on to defeat the Panthers 5-3 Tuesday night.

A 3-0 series lead has now turned into a 3-2 series that is headed back to Edmonton for Game 6 on Friday night. The Panthers will have a lot of time to think about how that happened during the 2,500-mile trek there.

The script for Game 5 was nearly identical to Game 4. The Panthers started the game with an early power play, made a costly turnover and the Oilers took the lead with a shorthanded breakaway goal 5:30 into the period.

"Yeah. It was a similar start to Game 4 with giving up the shorty there, which is just unacceptable,” Matthew Tkachuk said. “We've got to start better. I thought our start was good, but we just gave one up and then we were trailing. They played well. They put the puck in the net when they had their chances.

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"We had a good push. Thought five-on-five played really well tonight. That's something to build off of for next game. Obviously, we want to keep it five-on-five. We want to stay out of the box. If we do get a power play, capitalize on it, but try to keep it five-on-five as much as possible."

The Panthers did not register a shot on goal in the last 14:01 of the first period as the life was slowly sucked out of them. Edmonton star Connor McDavid took advantage of that quickly, putting together a three-point effort in the second period to give the Oilers a 3-0 lead and grab ahold of the game.

Tkachuk answered McDavid’s goal 1:53 later. After Corey Perry gave Edmonton a 4-1 lead, Evan Rodrigues answered just 14 seconds later to cut the lead back to two.

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Florida tried to dig itself out of the hole — Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored 4:04 into the third to bring the Panthers within a goal — but they just could not dig out of it. McDavid scored the empty-net goal with 19 seconds left to seal the deal.

“We’re going to turn the page, we’re going to learn from this one,” Rodrigues said. “We’re going to get ready for Game 6.”

Here are the takeaways from Tuesday's loss:

Too little, too late for the Panthers

The Panthers were invisible in the first period. They were held in their zone for the entirety of the frame once their unsuccessful power play turned into a shorthanded goal. Their effort was lacking and it took until midway through the second period for it to come back.

Florida outshot Edmonton 27-14 in the final two frames, but most of that came when they were already down 3-1. It was just too late, and now they are being dragged back to Alberta.

Oilers power play comes to life

The Panthers played with fire for a little too long and they eventually ended up getting burned. Edmonton was held without a 5-on-4 power play for the first four games, but they took advantage of their chances in Game 5.

Why? Because the Oilers had five of them in Game 5 and you cannot hold McDavid down for too long. On both power-play goals, McDavid threaded a pass together out of thin air in the final 10 seconds off the man advantage to get it done. Hyman and Perry cleaned it up near the front of the net both times.

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Matthew Tkachuk finally wakes up

After being held without a goal for the past 10 games, Tkachuk finally showed signs of life.

He scored the first goal before setting up Ekman-Larsson for his goal with a slick feed from below the goal line. He tried dragging the Panthers back into the game, but it was too little, too late.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Edmonton Oilers beat Florida Panthers to stay alive in Stanley Cup final