The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Detroit Red Wings 4-2 on Tuesday to extend the Stanley Cup finals to the weekend.
The Penguins won at home after losing twice in Detroit against the defending champions just as they did last year in the NHL finals.
Game 4, which could have been an elimination game for Pittsburgh, is today. Either Detroit can take a stranglehold 3-1 lead or the Penguins can make the finals a best-of-three series.
PHOTO: EPA
Sergei Gonchar’s power-play goal midway through the third period pumped up his discouraged Penguins teammates after Detroit pressed for the go-ahead score.
Gonchar’s slap shot from center point off Evgeni Malkin’s pass sailed past Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood as he was screened by Bill Guerin and Sidney Crosby. The Penguins prevented the Red Wings from taking a 3-0 series lead that would have allowed them to clinch their fifth Stanley Cup since 1997 as early as today.
“The power play was an unbelievable job by a handful of guys out there, keeping the play alive and giving Gonch a chance,” Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said.
Malkin assisted on the first three Penguins goals, giving him 33 points in 20 games, the most in the playoffs since Joe Sakic’s 34 for Stanley Cup champion Colorado in 1996.
Gonchar, and first-period scores by Max Talbot and Kris Letang, gave the Penguins hope again, just as they did by winning Game 3 by 3-2 on a pair of Crosby goals in last year’s finals. The Red Wings went on to win that one in six games.
“The urgency has to be there, but at the same time, you have to be smart about how you are playing,” Gonchar said. “They’re a good club. If you give them a chance, they’re going to capitalize on it.”
Talbot added an empty-net score in the final minute.
The way they played for much of Game 3, it looked like the Red Wings were trying to bury the Penguins for good.
They outshot the Penguins 26-11 following a furious first two periods that featured five-minute periods of continuous up-and-down play, numerous scoring chances at both ends — and, the way the Red Wings kept pressuring, plenty of tentativeness by towel-waving Penguins fans nervous they might see the Penguins’ season effectively end.
“We talked after the second, we didn’t have a very good second period. We needed to calm down and get back to our game,” Bylsma said.
Instead, Gonchar was right.
One of the few Penguins players at the rink on Monday’s day off, he constantly repeated that the Penguins did enough right during their twin 3-1 losses in Detroit to encourage them.
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