Penguins put Flyers on ice
PHILADELPHIA -- Sidney Crosby stood near center ice, answering questions from a television reporter as a few lingering fans berated him.
Crosby never flinched. He finished the interview and let the scoreboard do his talking back to the fans.
Sergei Gonchar scored 2:19 into the third period, and the Penguins eliminated the Flyers with a 5-3 victory Saturday in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference first-round series.
"It felt good," said Crosby, who scored the tying goal in the second period and had an empty-netter in the final minute. "We've had huge rivalries over the years. It's a loud building. They were playing well, and the crowd was into it, so to hear a little silence was gratifying."
The Penguins, who beat the Flyers in the conference finals last year, will have to wait to find out who they'll play next.
The Flyers will have to wait another year to pursue their first Stanley Cup since 1975.
"We did a lot of good things, but the fact of the matter is we still lost and we're out," Philadelphia captain Mike Richards said.
Ruslan Fedotenko and Mark Eaton also scored for the Penguins, and Marc-Andre Fleury made 22 saves.
Mike Knuble and Joffrey Lupul scored 51 seconds apart late in the first period, and Daniel Briere had a power-play goal for the Flyers.
After the Penguins scored three straight goals to tie the score in the second, Gonchar quickly put them ahead in the third. He ripped a slap shot past Martin Biron for his first goal of the series.
"It brought a smile to my face when he scored, because I had read that he hadn't been scoring," Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said.
The Flyers had a chance to tie the score several minutes later, but Claude Giroux hit the crossbar on a slap shot.
Philadelphia stayed alive with a 3-0 victory in Pittsburgh on Thursday. But the Flyers couldn't protect a 3-0 lead at home. They're 0-14 in playoff series after trailing 3-1 and haven't forced a Game 7 since losing to Edmonton in the 1987 Stanley Cup Finals.
With everything seemingly going Philadelphia's way, the Penguins scored two goals less than two minutes apart to get to 3-2. Fedotenko put in a rebound off a wraparound shot by Evgeni Malkin for Pittsburgh's first goal.
Eaton then swatted the puck into the net out of the air after Tyler Kennedy's slap shot hit off Biron and bounced up.
Crosby scored a similar goal to tie the score at 3 with 3:01 left in the second. Bill Guerin flicked a shot toward the net from the corner that popped out of Biron's glove right to Crosby, who knocked the puck in out of the air.
• Sharks 3, Ducks 2 -- At San Jose, Calif., Patrick Marleau scored his second game-winning goal of the playoffs 6:02 into overtime, and top-seeded San Jose avoided first-round elimination with a victory over Anaheim in Game 5.
Evgeni Nabokov made 23 saves for the Sharks, who blew a two-goal lead early in the third period at the Shark Tank.
San Jose stayed alive with an overtime goal from its reconstituted top line when Joe Thornton circled the net and slipped the puck in front, where Devin Setoguchi and Marleau hacked at it.
The puck landed behind Anaheim goalie Jonas Hiller, who accidentally nudged it over the goal line. Video review confirmed the officials' call while the Sharks already were in their dressing room, preparing to move on to Game 6 in Anaheim on Monday.
• Blackhawks 5, Flames 1 -- At Chicago, Patrick Sharp and Kris Versteeg scored 19 second apart in a three-goal first period, and Chicago beat Calgary to take a 3-2 series lead.
Game 6 is Monday in Calgary, where the Flames won Games 3 and 4 to even the first-round Western Conference series.
Chicago's Brent Seabrook opened the scoring on a power play 9:19 into the game, and Sharp and Versteeg quickly followed with goals over the next two minutes to make the score 3-0.
Calgary's Dustin Boyd cut the deficit to 3-1 early in the second, but Andrew Ladd and Cam Barker countered for the Blackhawks. Nikolai Khabibulin made 19 saves for Chicago.
"I thought we started really well, and we kept coming at them for 60 minutes," Sharp said.
