PROVIDENCE — Hartford regained control of its best-of-seven Atlantic Division semifinal series against Providence last night with a 5-2 victory at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.

Hartford defenseman Bryce Lampman scored twice to power the Wolf Pack to the Game Three win.

Hartford leads the series, 2-1, but Providence coach Scott Gordon isn’t too worried just yet.

“They still have to win four,” Gordon said. “It doesn’t matter which order you win it in. Right now we are down 2-1 with two games at home here and our objective is to go back to Hartford up 3-2.”

The players in the P-Bruins locker room are confident, too.

“I just think of the few little things that we didn’t do today. They capitalized on those chances but it’s a best-of-seven series,” Providence center Nate Thompson said. “It’s 2-1, and we have the next two at home, so we just have to come Tuesday with the mindset that we’ve got to get that game.”

Said Providence defenseman Jay Leach: “This is a marathon. We lost tonight but we still have four more opportunities to win the series. The biggest thing is Tuesday night and getting ready for that. Obviously we got to work on a few things that we didn’t do tonight that we’d like to improve upon, but I guess the biggest thing is to stay positive.”

Some of the things that Providence needs to work on are forechecking and making better decisions with the puck, Gordon said. Providence played last night’s game without four of its better defenders — Matt Lashoff, Mark Stuart, Nathan Dempsey and Jonathan Sigalet.

“We definitely need to get back to forechecking more aggressively,” Gordon said. “For some reason there is some tentativeness and part of it stems from where we are putting the puck. Where we’re putting the puck, we can’t retrieve it and I think our guys, because of that, have taken on a different mindset, which is kind of uncharacteristic for our team because we haven’t played that way all year.”

Trailing, 3-1, entering the third period, Gordon urged the P-Bruins to shoot more. Providence had only taken 16 shots on net prior to the third session.

Providence began the final period with two power plays in the opening four minutes but didn’t manage to get a shot on goal. Providence was 0-for-6 on power plays yesterday, and only had three shots on goal during its six man-advantages.

“They did a much better job tonight on their penalty kill but, at the same time, we weren’t as efficient on our breakout,” Gordon said. “I didn’t like the way we made our decisions coming from the neutral zone, and they have a big team. You look at our roster and we have a small team, so we have to support. We have to protect the puck well and when we get an opportunity to move it, we got to move it. We can’t hold on to it and we did more of that tonight than we did in the previous two games. As a result we didn’t get a lot of good looks at the net for shots.”

Providence outshot Hartford, 13-6, in the period, but the Wolf Pack outscored the P-Bruins, 2-1, in the period.

Jarkko Immonen extended Hartford’s lead to 4-1 in the 15th minute of the period before Levi Nelson scored for Providence two minutes later.

Dwight Helminen tallied an empty-net goal with 0.2 seconds left in the game for Hartford.

After outshooting Providence, 8-4, in the opening period, Hartford erupted for three goals in the second session to take control of the game. Lampman scored 26 seconds into the period and at 4:48 before Martins Karsums cut the Wolf Pack’s lead to 2-1 by beating Hartford goalie Al Montoya.

But with 35 seconds left, Brandon Dubinsky stole an errant pass in the P-Bruins’ zone and scored to extend Hartford’s advantage to 3-1.

“I thought we played well in the third period,” Gordon said. “We generated more shots, which is encouraging. But in the first and second period, [we’ve] got to do better then 10 shots and I’m sure they are saying the same thing, too. It has been really tight defensively. Neither team has given up a lot of great chances and the goalies have been for the most part pretty good. That’s just the type of series it is.”

roblee@projo.com