Penguins clinch series as Guentzel scores 4
PHILADELPHIA — Jake Guentzel scored four straight goals to help send the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins into the next round with an 8-5 win over the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 6 on Sunday.
The Penguins play the winner of the Washington-Columbus series in the National Hockey League’s Eastern Conference semifinal. Washington leads that series 3-2.
Sean Couturier also had a hat trick for the Flyers, who haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1975.
Guentzel, not Sidney Crosby, Phil Kessel or the injured Evgeni Malkin, won the game for the Penguins with goals off costly Flyers turnovers, leading them to their ninth straight playoff series win.
He tied the game at 4 with 54 seconds left in the second period off a Flyers turnover. He scored 30 seconds into the third for the lead off another giveaway, and sealed one more lopsided win over the Flyers with two goals 10 seconds apart late in the period.
It was 2-2 after one period, 4-4 after two, and nothing was decided in the fiercest game of the series between the long-standing rivals until Guentzel took control.
The Flyers lost all three games at home and not even a solid start could help them get out of the
first round for the first time since 2012.
Couturier had been the Flyers’ post-season saviour, returning from a serious leg injury to score the Game 5 winner and then open Game 6 with his third goal of the series just 2:15 into the game.
The Penguins, who won Games
3 and 4 in Philly, took aim on the road sweep with two straight goals. Crosby, naturally, tied the game when he knocked in a rebound off Kris Letang’s point shot for his whopping sixth goal of the series. His goal was still being announced when Carl Hagelin made it 2-1 when he was
left all alone in front of the net for the easy goal.
Philly’s defence was nonexistent and the Flyers had no bodies on Crosby and especially Hagelin on the gimme goals against Michal Neuvirth.
Andrew MacDonald tied it 2-2 on a sizzling shot. The defenceman
briefly gave his team the spark needed to go toe-to-toe with the Penguins. Couturier scored his second of the game on a beautiful breakaway to open the second period and Scott Laughton scored on a long wrister and nearly pulled off a Lambeau Leap over the boards in celebration.