HILADELPHIA (AP) — Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal pushed back with a vengeance with Pittsburgh on the brink of being sweep, leading the Penguins to a 10-3 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday night in the first-round Eastern Conference series.
Staal had a hat trick, Malkin scored his first two goals of the series, and Crosby added one to help the Penguins cut the Flyers' series lead to 3-1. Game 5 is Friday night in Pittsburgh.
Marc-Andre Fleury settled down after a shaky first period and had his best game of the series, easily outplaying counterpart Ilya Bryzgalov.
Matt Niskanen, Kris Letang, Steve Sullivan and Pascal Dupuis also scored for Philadelphia. After the Flyers took a 3-2 lead, the Penguins scored eight straight goals to become the first team to score at least 10 goals in a playoff game since Los Angeles had 12 against Calgary in April 1990, according to STATS LLC.
Claude Giroux, Kimmo Timonen and Jakub Voracek scored for the Flyers. Bryzgalov was replaced by Sergei Bobrovsky after allowing Pittsburgh's fifth goal.
CANUCKS 3, KINGS 1
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cory Schneider made 43 saves and stopped Dustin Brown's penalty shot in his first career playoff victory, Daniel Sedin sparked Vancouver's power play in his return from injury, and the top-seeded Canucks beat Los Angeles to avoid an embarrassing first-round sweep.
Kevin Bieksa scored the go-ahead goal, and Alex Edler and captain Henrik Sedin scored the first two power-play goals of the series for the Canucks, who emphatically avoided becoming the first Presidents' Trophy-winning team in the post-expansion era to get swept out of the first round.
Anze Kopitar scored a first-period goal, and Jonathan Quick stopped 27 shots for the Kings, who couldn't capitalize on their first chance to close out their first playoff series victory since 2001. Brown had a chance to tie it with 14:37 to play, but Schneider wasn't fooled by the Los Angeles captain's multiple moves.
Game 5 is Sunday in Vancouver.
The Canucks got a boost from leading goal-scorer Daniel Sedin, who returned from a 12-game absence because of a concussion and contributed an assist to a power play that went 0 for 14 in the first three games.
The defending Western Conference champions overcame a second-period deficit with three straight goals to back Schneider, making his second straight start in place of Roberto Luongo.
SENATORS 3, RANGERS 2, OT
OTTAWA (AP) — Kyle Turris scored at 2:42 of overtime to lift Ottawa past New York, tying the Eastern Conference series at two games apiece.
Turris, acquired from Phoenix during the season, took a drop pass from Jim O'Brien and snapped a wrist shot past Henrik Lundqvist's glove from the left faceoff circle.
Milan Michalek and Sergei Gonchar scored in the second period for the Senators to erase a 2-0 deficit, and Craig Anderson stopped 31 shots.
Anton Stralman and Ryan Callahan had power-plays goals early in the first period for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqvist made 28 saves.
Game 5 is Saturday night in New York.
