The Chicago Blackhawks scored twice in the final 10 minutes of regulation to overcome a 1-0 deficit and take the first game of the Stanley Cup final from the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Maybe prior to Game 2, the Lightning can hire former coach John Tortorella to shout: “Safe is death,” from the stands, because safety, as a strategy, led to their demise.

“We didn’t get much,” Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper said after the loss. “They buried their chances. We didn’t.”

Tonight’s contest and ultimately the series began at a torrid pace. There was no grand amount of feeling the opposition out in the neutral zone, which is rare for two teams that only met twice during the regular season, splitting the pair. Both teams traded scoring chances at either end, which resulted in some athletic saves by Lightning goaltender Ben Bishop and Blackhawks counterpart Corey Crawford.

It was Tampa that got on the board first, thanks to a slick backhanded redirection by Alex Killorn, his eighth of the playoffs, off an Anton Stralman shot from the point. The goal came just four minutes, 31 seconds into the action.

Just seconds before the puck snuck past Crawford, the play was seeming innocuous as the Swedish defenseman shuffled the puck wide right. Killorn, showing off incredible hand-eye-coordination, changed the direction of the puck in mid-air and behind his back.

Crawford never stood a chance.

Following the goal, the ice titled in Tampa’s favor. Their offense boiled, while Chicago’s began to simmer.

The beauty of hockey lies in the ebbs and flows of the 60 minutes – and maybe more, depending on overtime – of play. Tampa struggled in the latter half of the period, being held shot-less for the final eight minutes. Chicago, helped by a power play thanks to a Jason Garrison cross-check, turned things around and the teams finished up an eventful 20 minutes to start to the 2015 Stanley Cup final.

In the second period, that feeling-out stage took center ice. The play spent most of the period in the neutral zone, with teams struggled to find a semblance of attack. Neither really had any sustained pressure.

In the waning moments of the period, thanks to captain, elite goalscoring center and sometimes winger Steven Stamkos, the Lightning briefly looked like they found some offense. First the threat came in the form of a rocket-powered, long-distance slap shot, then in the form of a one-timer. It was a reminder that in tight-checking games, stars can rule the ice.

For the Blackhawks that was also true. In their flickers of offensive hope through the first 40 minutes, it was Patrick Kane, a former Conn Smythe trophy-winner – annually awarded to the Stanley Cup playoffs’ Most Valuable Player – that dazzled, with his hands and feet, more than his shot.

Still, through 40 minutes, Chicago only managed a meager 13 shots on goal, to Tampa’s 18.

The game had a bound-for-lenthy-overtime feel to it, aside for the first 10 minutes. Both teams were overly cautious, a style that favors Chicago’s veteran team on the surface – after all, the core guys are in the Stanley Cup final for the third time in six years – but the Lightning have shown they can win any way they want.

In the third, they were playing a trap-style game, clogging the zone-entry point for Chicago and being extremely passive with the forward forechecking scheme. Most of the players hung back, creating a seemingly impenetrable wall. It’s a prevent defense that actually sometimes works in hockey because the scoring chances are so rare.

“We didn’t give much the entire game,” Cooper said.

He acknowledged however, the Blackhawks had better possession in the pivotal third period.

Tonight, it didn’t quite work out the way the Lightning hoped. You could argue the strategy was so passive that the second they showed an ounce of aggression – their first shot came at 11:39 of the third period on a Ryan Callahan breakaway a couple minutes before the goal – it ended up burning them.

At 13:28 of the third period, rookie Finnish sensation Tuevo Teravainen, who got his toes wet in last year’s playoffs and at times has been scratched in favor of experience, buried the tying goal.

“He doesn’t have a heartbeat,” Marian Hossa told the Sporting News of his teammate Teravainen’s composure in the playoffs.

His shot was perfect, aided by the screen of his line mates, and beat the very tall Bishop, with his penchant for dipping into the butterfly style a little too early.

The real game began with about six minutes left in the third period: the one that was expected all along.

“Our team got better as the game went on,” Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville acknowledged after the game.

Destiny seemed to say the game would go deep into the night, but Antoine Vermette, acquired at the trade deadline for a first-round pick, had other ideas as he scored to give his team a 2-1 lead.

It was Teravainen again, with a play beyond his years that led to the goal, but this time, it was a turnover he created. The puck trickled to Vermette, in the slot and gave Chicago the one-goal advantage, which is how the game would end.

Vermette’s goal came at 15:26 of the third period, 118 seconds after Teravainen knotted the game at 1-1.

Chicago, the slim favorite in the series, will now go into Game 2 on Saturday night at 8om with a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. The way these two teams played, it’s clear we may be in for a long haul.