The St. Louis Blues allowed another third period lead slip through their fingers with a 5-4 defeat to the Lightning in Tampa Bay.

Mike Sillinger scored a goal in the first period and another in the second to give the Blues a 2-1 lead. Keith Tkachuk scored on a power-play goal later in the second period to put St. Louis up 3-1. That was at the 14:35 mark of the second period. That’s when the good times ended for the Blues.

Ruslan Fedontenko scored 2:04 seconds after Tkachuk’s goal to cut St. Louis’ lead to 3-2.

In the third, Tim Taylor scored at the 6:15 mark to tie it up and 7:15 later, Marin St. Louis broke the tie with his 11th goal of the season. Fedontenko scored on an empty netter with 34 seconds to go to make it 5-3. Tkachuk added a meaningless goal with 18 seconds to go in the game.

Patrick Lalime made 28 saves on 32 shots on goal for the Blues.