PITTSBURGH — Sid and The Kids are off to the Stanley Cup Finals, thanks to a dominating run by a younger-than-young Pittsburgh Penguins team that has taken only two seasons to transform itself from one of the NHL’s worst to one of its best.
Ryan Malone, the one Penguins player with firsthand memories of the team’s two previous Stanley Cup appearances, scored twice and set up a third goal and Pittsburgh routed Philadelphia 6-0 on Sunday to win the Eastern Conference finals.
The Penguins, who dominated Game 5 from the start as Malone and Evgeni Malkin scored in the first 10 minutes, will play the winner of the Detroit-Dallas series for the Stanley Cup. The Red Wings take a 3-2 series lead into Dallas for Game 6 of the Western Conference finals tonight.
“It’s unbelievable just to realize we’re four wins away,” defenseman Ryan Whitney said. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet that these next few games are the Stanley Cup Finals.”
Marian Hossa had a goal and three assists and Sidney Crosby, the 20-year-old captain of a team that was the Eastern Conference’s worst two seasons ago, added two assists. Jordan Staal, 19, scored his third goal in two games and fourth of the series. Pascal Dupuis, an Atlanta teammate of Hossa’s before the two were dealt to Pittsburgh, also scored.
Pittsburgh goes for the Cup for the first time since 1992. Malone was the only current Penguins player who was there, along for the ride as the 12-year-old son of then-Penguins scouting director and former player Greg Malone.
“Never, never would have thought it,” Ryan Malone said of someday playing for the Cup himself.
Crosby was presented with the conference championship trophy, but it remained on the presentation table at mid-ice as neither Crosby nor any other Penguins player touched it. By superstition, most teams decline to handle any trophy unless it’s the Stanley Cup.
