Last season to this series, the Florida Panthers have won their last five playoff games in a row played in Boston. They’ll make it six now — or there will be a Game 7. File Tuesday night under Nothing Comes Easy. What might have seen Cats fans celebrating a playoff advance saw the lead turn precarious as the series heads back north. The Cats were home and up 3-1 with a chance to end the Bruins season and clinch a spot in the NHL Eastern Conference finals. Now, after Tuesday night’s 2-1 Game 5 home loss, instead of resting and awaiting the New York Rangers-Carolina winner, Florida takes a now-precarious 3-2 series lead back up to Boston for Game 6 on Friday, with a Game 7 if necessary back in South Florida on Sunday.

“[Boston] brought a little more battle than we did,” said the Panthers’ Kevin Stenlund. “We came out a little bit slow.” “They came out quicker than we did,” said Carter Verhaeghe. “We’re going to recover and we’re going to come back.” Captain Aleksander Barkov was blunt: “We got to play harder. We were sitting back watching what was happening. We have to play a lot better than that.”

As they had in the previous game, the Bruins skated to an early lead when Morgan Geekie’s goal just 4:49 into the game made it 1-0. Boston dominated possession early and led in first-period shots, 13-4. Florida got level at 1-1 6:23 into the second period when Sam Reinhart’s wrist shot flat-out beat Jeremy Swayman. “Incredible hand skills in traffic,” said coach Paul Maurice of Reinhart. “He did some freakishly good things out there.”

The score came just seconds back from a TV timeout. So what were Maurice’s words of wisdom to his team during the break? “They needed some profanity in their life,” he said. “I brought some.” But Boston took only four minutes to regain the lead at 2-1 when Charlie McAvoy’s wrister got through Sergei Bobrovsky, who otherwise played masterfully. Florida challenged, alleging goalie interference led to the score. The striped shirts properly (based on replays) did not concur.