PROVIDENCE — Providence has already come back twice to tie its best-of-seven Atlantic Division semifinal series with Hartford after being down a game.

In order to keep its season alive and its hopes of reaching the 2007 Calder Cup finals, the P-Bruins will have to do it again in Hartford.

That’s because Hartford bounced back from an embarrassing Game Four loss, which tied its second-worse defeat in postseason history (5-1) to stun the P-Bruins, 1-0, last night at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Game Five to take a 3-2 lead in the series.

Providence now has a big mountain to climb to win the series. Only two teams in the history of the American Hockey League have won games six and seven on the road — Maine in the first round of the 1983 playoffs, and Portland in the Eastern Conference Finals in 1996.

“We just have to continue to do what he have been successful at,” Providence coach Scott Gordon said when asked what will be the key to winning on the road. “The team has a blueprint for that and when we played well we followed it. Our guys will come out ready to play.”

“There is no reason why we can’t play well over there,” said Providence goalie Hannu Toivonen who made 23 saves.

Gordon liked Providence’s effort, but several times the P-Bruins didn’t make the right decisions with the puck on offense. The P-Bruins were booed a couple of times during power plays for passing too much and not shooting enough.

“Each team had their moments but obviously they played well both with and without the puck tonight,” Gordon said. “They were better and our guys probably for two periods worth of hockey in the 60 minutes, we did what we needed to do. But we got off a little bit and a lot of times it was just forcing it or turning down shots when the shots were there.”

Providence’s lack of aggression came back to haunt them. Providence was 0-for-4 on the man-advantage.

Providence’s defense played well once again, but all it takes is one mistake, and the P-Bruins made an uncharacteristic special-teams’ mistake last night that proved costly.

The P-Bruins entered last night’s game having limited Hartford to just one goal on 21 man-advantages, which translates into a 95.2-percent success rate. That was the best postseason success rate in the AHL, so Gordon was pretty confident that the P-Bruins weren’t going to allow a goal after Providence defenseman Jason Platt was called for a holding penalty at 7:00 of the second period.

But Hartford was able to score with the extra man on the ice. Toivonen made an acrobatic kick save on Nigel Dawes’ shot from between the circles in the early moments of the power play, but he later muscled in a rebound from pointblank range.

That’s all the offense that Hartford needed because Wolf Pack goalie Al Montoya (25 saves) played spectacular in the shutout.

The Wolf Pack were hoping that the return of team captain Craig Weller (11 goals, 6 assists) would give them the same lift that Mark Stuart’s return gave Providence in Game Four right out of the gate.

But the Wolf Pack couldn’t get much going offensively in the first period because of Providence’s forecheck, which allowed the P-Bruins to keep the puck in its offensive end for much of the period. The P-Bruins also received three power plays in the opening session, which kept the Wolf Pack on their heels.

Hartford came out of the locker room intense and was the aggressor in the opening minutes of the second chapter, but Providence withstood the Wolf Pack’s initial surge and nearly went up 1-0 on a Jeff Hoggan slap shot form the right circle. His shot hit the right post and deflected back into play.

Jarkko Immonen connected with Dawes on his goal at 8:01 of the period to up Hartford’s top line of Immonen, Dawes, and Alex Bourret’s impressive performance to 22 points in the series.

Hartford never let up in the third period and bombarded Toivonen with shots early on. He swatted them away one by one to keep Providence within striking distance. Toivonen’s effort was wasted though because Providence couldn’t get anything going offensively in the third period until it was too late.

“Hannu kept it a one goal game,” Gordon said. “He certainly kept up his part of it, unfortunately so did Montoya.”

rlee@projo.com