Excited Kessel ready for 1st final

Count Phil Kessel among the speechless after the Penguins’ Game 7 win Thursday night at Consol Energy Center.

This Penguins winger whose career has taken off in these 2016 playoffs is going to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time.

“I’m so thrilled,” a beaming Kessel said.

“I, I, I don’t even know what to say.”

The Penguins’ leading scorer through three rounds — with 9 goals, 9 assists — eventually found a few words.

“This is a huge moment in my career. I have nothing but good things to say about everyone in here,” he said.

He was then asked to juxtapose Thursday night with where he was a year ago.

Lest anyone forget, he was in Toronto finishing a sixth spring without a playoff berth.

“I don’t think you can dream about that. You never can expect this,” Kessel said.

“This is a huge moment in my career, my life. I don’t even know what to say I’m so excited.”

But Kessel was not among the final seven players named to Team USA Friday when final rosters were announced for the World Cup of Hockey in the fall.

Crosby touches trophy

Sidney Crosby’s superstitions are legendary in hockey.

And so late Thursday night when he grasped the conference championship trophy there on the ice of Consol Energy Center, it was no oversight. Some believe it’s bad luck to touch it, but Crosby said later, he chose to put his hands on the Prince of Wales trophy for a reason.

“I think in the ’90s when they won, they touched it,” Crosby said.

“Then in ’08, when we didn’t win, we didn’t. So in ’09, we decided to go ahead and touch it and tried to keep that same kind of thing. So kind of everyone’s different. You see teams that don’t touch it, but it’s gone well when we’ve touched it here. So we went with that.”

Two Swedes make roster

Forwards Patric Hornqvist and Carl Hagelin were named to Team Sweden for the World Cup of Hockey tournament in Toronto in September.

Hornqvist has 7 goals, 4 assists in the playoffs, and Hagelin has 5 goals, 7 assists. The two players among seven additions to the team Friday, the final day to make roster additions.

Eight teams will compete in the two-week event.

Tip-Ins

With his Game 7 goals, Bryan Rust became just the second rookie in NHL history to record multiple goals in two series-clinching wins in a single postseason, according to Elias Sports. The other was Chicago’s Jeremy Roenick in 1990. … Italian crooner Andrea Bocelli moved his June 4 concert at SAP Center up a night to June 3 to accommodate Game 3 of the Stanley Cup final. …The Penguins took Friday off and will return to the ice today at the practice facility in Cranberry in advance of Game 1 Monday night at Consol Energy Center.