PITTSBURGH (AP) The end of two springs’ worth of playoff angst for the Pittsburgh Penguins came suddenly, crammed into 14 minutes of pure exhilaration, one highlight-reel sequence piled atop another.
And perhaps it’s fitting that Pittsburgh’s relentless five-game demolition of the New York Rangers – completed during a raucous 6-3 on Saturday that ushered New York to an early offseason – wasn’t sealed by the familiar faces atop the Penguins’ star-laden roster but the pieces brought in to help return Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang to their spot among the league’s elite.
Conor Sheary. Bryan Rust. Matt Murray. All in their early 20s. All now vital parts of a team that looks every bit a Stanley Cup contender as it prepared to face either Washington or Philadelphia in the conference semifinals.
Rust and Sheary combined for three goals during Pittsburgh’s second-period explosion against uncharacteristically shaky Henrik Lundqvist and Murray turned away 38 shots as the Penguins exacted revenge against the Rangers, who knocked Pittsburgh out of the postseason in 2014 and 2015. The setbacks led to franchise-wide soul searching, including hiring Mike Sullivan to take over for Mike Johnston in mid-December and having general manager Jim Rutherford overhaul the roster with fresh legs unburdened by past failure.
”We are obviously all aware of what’s happened in the past,” said Rust. ”There’s guys who obviously weren’t there. We wanted to fight harder to make sure that didn’t happen like two years ago when the team was up 3-1 and they lost that lead and ended up losing the series. We wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.”
Matt Cullen, Carl Hagelin and Phil Kessel – who like Sheary and Rust were not on the roster when Pittsburgh bowed out in five meek games against New York last year – also scored for the Penguins to end a miserable and brief postseason for Lundqvist, who stopped just 17 of 23 shots and failed to make it to the third period for the third time in the series.
In Anaheim, Ryan Garbutt scored the go-ahead goal in the second period for the Ducks, who beat the Nashville Predators 5-2 for the first win by a home team in their first-round series, which Anaheim leads 3-2.
Nashville had won the first two games in Anaheim before the Ducks tied it with two wins on the Predators’ home ice.
David Perron scored the tying goal earlier in the second and assisted on Garbutt’s goal. The Ducks added three goals in the third: Sami Vatanen scored on a breakaway, Cam Fowler had a power-play goal and Ryan Kesler added an empty-netter.
Miikka Salomaki and Ryan Johansen scored for Nashville.
In Chicago, Artem Anisimov, Trevor van Riemsdyk and Dale Weise scored during the Blackhawks’ dominant second period as they beat St. Louis 6-3 to send their first-round playoff series to Game 7.
Andrew Shaw added a third-period goal in his return from a one-game suspension for using a gay slur during Chicago’s 4-3 loss in Game 4. Andrew Ladd had a goal and an assist as the Blackhawks improved to 15-1 in their last 16 Game 6s in the playoffs.
Chicago trailed 3-1 in the series, but stayed alive with a 4-3 double-overtime victory in St. Louis on Thursday. Then, the defending Stanley Cup champions trailed 3-1 after one period in Game 6, but found a way again.
Game 7 is Monday night.
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