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TAMPA, Florida (Ticker) -- The Tampa Bay Lightning turned back a rally by the Philadelphia Flyers in another momentum-turning game in the Eastern Conference finals.

Brad Richards scored two power-play goals and Ruslan Fedotenko had another as the Lightning moved within a win of the first Stanley Cup Finals berth in team history with a 4-2 triumph over the Flyers.

The three power-play goals gave Tampa Bay a seemingly comfortable lead and delighted the largest crowd in the history of the St. Pete Times Forum.

"They have scored (five) power-play goals the last two games, so that's obviously a concern, and we haven't," Philadelphia coach Ken Hitchcock said. "The difference in the hockey game was they won the special teams games, then we couldn't finish on all the point-blank chances we had in the second and third periods."

But Philadelphia silenced the crowd midway through the second period with lightning-quick goals by Michal Handzus and rookie Patrick Sharp . The Flyers dominated the third but could not get the equalizer past Nikolai Khabibulin , who made 15 of his 28 saves in the final 20 minutes.

"I think I was calm in the third, I tried to be," Khabibulin said. "I tried not to put pressure on me, I was just trying to stop the next shot. I thought we settled down (when the Flyers made it 3-2), and after that battled hard. Then we were able to hang on."

Philadelphia pulled goaltender Robert Esche for an extra attacker in the final minute, but Alex Zhamnov could not keep in a puck at the left point. Martin St. Louis raced down the right side and fed Tim Taylor for an empty-net goal that sealed the win with 14 seconds left.

"We tried to hang on for dear life. Thank God for Khabibulin," Taylor said. "If we keep playing like we did in the first period, they can't hang with us. But we let up."

Richards' two-goal performance tied the team playoff record. Tampa Bay is 30-0-2 this season when he scores.

"The whole team really came out exceptionally hard, relentless in the first period and we played with a lot more desperation and passion," Richards said. "That got everybody going."

Neither team has been able to win two in a row in the first five games of the series, which continues Thursday in Philadelphia. If necessary, Game Seven is here on Saturday night.

"This was it," Tampa Bay defenseman Dan Boyle said. "It was life or death. We didn't want to go down 3-2."

"We will be confident (on Thursday)," Flyers captain Keith Primeau said. "Obviously, we would have preferred to be going home, (up) 3-2, but we're not. ... We have to win one game. That's what we will focus on for the next two days."

A former Flyer, Fedotenko opened the scoring 10 1/2 minutes into the game. After deflecting Boyle's shot, he put his own rebound between Esche and defenseman Kim Johnsson for his sixth playoff goal and third of the series.

Another Lightning power play carried into the second period and Richards made it 2-0 at the 24-second mark when he one-timed a blast from the left faceoff dot over Esche's glove.

Just three seconds after Philadelphia's Michal Handzus was penalized for holding, Vincent Lecavalier won a faceoff and got the puck to Richards, who beat Esche with another one-timer for his eighth postseason goal.

"I was challenged and I challenged myself to play a lot better than I did last year in the playoffs," Richards said. "It's something I concentrated on."

Handzus started the Flyers' comeback at 8:56 and Sharp made it 3-2 just 38 seconds later when he converted a feed from Primeau into his first career playoff tally.

"We started to really turn it up in the second period," Primeau said. "We generated a lot of chances. They seemed to regroup for a bit, it settled back in. We were coming hard and I thought we were going to tie it up. Just fell a little short."