Pittsburgh takes first game in Eastern Conference finals

PITTSBURGH | Evgeni Malkin made sure that round one of the Eastern Conference finals would go to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Malkin scored two dazzling goals 5 minutes apart, giving the Penguins a two-goal lead and sending them on their way to a 4-2 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Friday night.

Malkin, who is only 21 but is the leading scorer in the playoffs with 17 points after a three-point night, scored with 6.5 seconds left in the first period with a tired Flyers line on the ice and put Pittsburgh up 3-2.

The pivotal goal blunted much of the momentum the Flyers gained by briefly taking a 2-1 lead on Mike Richards’ two goals.

Malkin’s first career short-handed goal, on a breakaway created by Sergei Gonchar’s pass from one end of the ice to the other early in the second, was the crusher for the Flyers, who didn’t do much offensively after that despite taking 28 shots against goalie Marc-Andre Fleury.

With Philadelphia on the power play, Malkin missed his initial short-handed attempt before being leveled behind the net by Richards. Malkin got up and began skating toward the Penguins’ zone. Before he got there, Marian Hossa knocked the puck loose from Daniel Briere.

That allowed Gonchar to sail it back down the ice to Malkin for a slap shot between the hash marks that flew past Martin Biron before he could react, generating a huge roar from the all-in-white Penguins crowd of 17,132.

This night, it was the Penguins who were high-flying, creating odd-man rushes and breakouts with an extra gear the short-handed Flyers couldn’t match during their fourth successive loss in Pittsburgh over three months.

Sidney Crosby, held without a goal in his previous five games, tied it at 14:11 of the first after Hossa intercepted Biron’s clearing pass as it came out of the corner and put a pass on Crosby’s stick as he cut in from the right circle.