Penguins' Big Guns Firing on All Cylinders Makes Them Favorites in ECF Game 7

If all players perform to their potential, there's little doubt how the series between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning will conclude.

With all due respect to the Lightning—a good team that remains just one win away from a second consecutive appearance in the Stanley Cup Final—they don't have nearly the firepower of the Penguins, or the number of game-breakers.

Again, when every player is performing to his potential.

We were reminded of that in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Final on Tuesday night in Tampa. The Penguins were facing elimination after dropping the previous contest at home in disappointing fashion. So Phil Kessel, Kris Letang, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin made sure that didn't happen again, leading the Pens to a 5-2 win and forcing a winner-take-all matchup back in Pittsburgh on Thursday night.

Kessel opened the scoring on a five-on-three power play with one minute, 14 seconds left in the first period.

Letang made it 2-0 in the second period, and late in the frame, Crosby practically willed the puck into the net for an insurance-marker that wound up as the winner after the Bolts' frantic third-period comeback attempt.

After they came under a great deal of criticism for being unable to consistently dominate the series, the Penguins' big guns put forth determined efforts Tuesday. Asked postgame by the CBC's Scott Oake about the questions surrounding himself, Letang and Malkin, Crosby said they were all confident they would rise to the occasion.

"We have a lot of belief in everybody," Crosby said. "When games are big like this, I think we've played good hockey all year long in these situations. I think we trusted that it was going to be a good team effort, but we're trying to be a difference out there."

They were. And they will have to be again Thursday for the Penguins to return to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since they won it in 2009 in their second straight appearance.

Pittsburgh is so buoyed by star power, the coaching staff made the mistake of taking the net away from rookie Matt Murray in Game 5 just to get Marc-Andre Fleury his first start of these playoffs. That backfired, and the Penguins handed the crease back to Murray for Tuesday's contest.

He was scored on early, but Jonathan Drouin's goal was (brilliantly) challenged and subsequently erased because of an offside entry.

And when it mattered most—during a hectic third period in which Pittsburgh was on its heels as Tampa Bay played like its season was at stake—Murray made 18 saves.

He allowed one blooper to Brian Boyle that caromed off Kessel, who swatted the puck into his own goal as he tried to tip it away as deftly as he had batted it into the correct net on a Crosby feed in the first period.

The other Lightning goal came on Boyle's perfect wrist shot that went past two bodies perched in front of the Pens goaltender and high into the net on the far side.

That was all the Bolts could muster.

Bryan Rust scored on a breakaway with 2:08 left in regulation, and Nick Bonino added an empty-netter to squash any hopes of a comeback.

Crosby's herculean effort stood as the winner. And for all the flak he takes whenever the Penguins lose a playoff game, the Penguins captain now has the winning goal in each of his team's three victories in this series.

The latest one was vintage Sid. He picked up the puck, poked loose by a backchecking Patric Hornqvist, bounced off a hit by Ondrej Palat, side-armed defenseman Anton Stralman and outraced Victor Hedman before sliding the puck five-hole on Andrei Vasilevskiy.

Those are no slouches.

Crosby was a bulldog on defense all game as well, contributing to the heavy count of turnovers coughed up by the Lightning over the first 40 minutes—and a whopping 17 giveaways by the end of the night. And that's with Tampa Bay's statisticians counting.

Malkin had the second assist on Kessel's goal and was as engaged as we've seen in the series—and perhaps the playoffs. He got into a stick-swinging exchange with Ryan Callahan and played some responsible defense to finish with a plus-one rating.

Kessel did what Kessel does, adding his ninth goal in 17 postseason games this year.

Letang topped the Pens' blue line in minutes with 23:48 and scored his second goal of the playoffs by joining the rush as the third man in.

Another game like that by the Penguins' stars and Lightning fans will have to wait for the Steven Stamkos free-agency frenzy for their next drama fix.

"Anything can happen in a Game 7; we know that," Crosby said on the ice after the game. "But we put ourselves in position to play for it, so we're just going to go after it."