SAN JOSE, Calif.—The deficit for the San Jose Sharks was daunting. They were two goals down in the third period of an elimination game to the stingy Dallas Stars.

By rallying out of that hole, the Sharks moved halfway toward completing an even bigger comeback—winning a playoff series after dropping the first three games.

Joe Pavelski capped the comeback by scoring 65 seconds into overtime, sending the Sharks to a 3-2 victory over Dallas in Game 5 on Friday.

The Stars’ lead in the series is down to 3-2.

“When you’re down 3-0 it’s not easy,” Pavelski said. “They’re trying to close us out and we’re fighting for our lives. This team wants to play another day. We got two wins, there’s still two more to go. We can only look at the next game though.”

That will come Sunday in Dallas, in a Game 6 that didn’t look like it would be necessary when the Starts took a 2-0 lead into the third period. But Milan Michalek got San Jose on the board after Dallas had an apparent goal waved off for a second time and Brian Campbell tied it with 8:53 to go, setting the stage for Pavelski’s game-winner.

The Sharks, who won Game 4 in Dallas 2-1, are just the fourth team in the past 20 seasons to stretch a series even to six games after trailing 0-3. They were on the other side of it the last time it happened before recovering to beat Colorado in Game 6 in the second round in 2004.

Only two teams ever have completed the comeback: the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1942 and the New York Islanders in 1975.

“I think there’s a little bit of doubt in their mind,” San Jose coach Ron Wilson said. “This (comeback) doesn’t happen very often, and then you top it off with this (game). ... We’ve done a lot of things that are great for our character, to show that we have it. At times tonight we showed our nerves and our younger players showed their youth, but we survived. We really took it to them.”

It just took two sluggish periods before that happened. Joe Thornton set up Michalek’s fourth goal of the series 6:20 into the third and then Jeremy Roenick threaded a perfect pass from inside his blue line to a streaking Campbell, who beat Marty Turco with a wrist shot to tie the game.

“We said, ’Let’s go out and throw out everything we have in the third period,”’ Roenick said. “’Let’s just empty the tanks and put out every effort we possibly have. If we do that, we’ll have a shot.”’

The Sharks were rolling after that, getting the game-winner on a great individual effort by Pavelski. He raced across the ice to chase down a loose puck near the boards. He then skated back across the middle, waited patiently for defenseman Nicklas Grossman to drop and beat Turco to the short side.

Turco made 19 saves, but allowed three goals in less than 15 minutes as Dallas must wait at least two more days to make it to the conference finals for the first time in eight years.

Four of the five games in this series have been decided by one goal, including three in overtime.

“We’re not down or disappointed,” Turco said. “They made a great shot. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. It certainly wasn’t easy tonight.”

Jere Lehtinen and captain Brenden Morrow scored second-period goals for the Stars, who controlled play and seemed headed for an easy evening at the Shark Tank, where they had won eight of nine coming into the game.

Morrow also had two apparent goals that were waved off by the officials, one for kicking the puck into the net and another for batting it with his hand. After Morrow’s first apparent goal was waved off, he put a white towel on the end of his stick in hockey’s famed gesture of mock surrender.

“Our team battles through adversity, but those were two critical points of the game,” Dallas coach Dave Tippett said. “I still haven’t seen a distinct kicking motion, but I suppose somebody else did. The other one, I agree with the call ... but if Brenden Morrow isn’t cross-checked in the back, he would have put the puck down and in the back of the net. Those are two critical plays in the game, and you have to find a way to overcome that.”

Evgeni Nabokov stopped 24 shots for the Sharks.