PITTSBURGH \u2013 Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby and his future Hall of Fame teammates returned to the playoffs.<\/p>\n
So did the Philadelphia Flyers, who have been playing playoff-style hockey for the past month during their desperate pursuit of a postseason berth and looked every bit the part in a 3-2 victory on Saturday at PPG Paints Arena in Game 1 of the best-of-seven series.<\/p>\n
Travis Sanheim broke a 1-1 tie midway through the third period, dancing around Elmer S\u00f6derblom before firing a shot from the slot past Penguins goaltender Stuart Skinner.<\/p>\n
The Flyers controlled the play early and often with a bruising style of hockey that clearly impacted the Penguins, starting the game by unleashing 17 hits in the first period.<\/p>\n
Skinner, who was outstanding all evening, stopped a series of Grade-A looks early in the second period to keep the score even. Flyers defenseman Jamie Drysdale finally beat him, with some help from a Sam Girard screen, to put Philadelphia ahead.<\/p>\n
An Evgeni Malkin goal late in the second period gave the Penguins life and temporarily energized the building, but with the way this game went, they never had a chance. The Flyers put on a defensive clinic and finally started capitalizing on the Penguins\u2019 many mistakes.<\/p>\n
Sanheim broke the tie, and rookie Porter Martone scored his first career postseason goal late in the third to make it 3-1. A Bryan Rust goal for the Penguins made it 3-2 late in the game, but Pittsburgh ran out of time to find the equalizer.<\/p>\n
Game 2 of the series will be played on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Sanheim leads way on both ends<\/p>\n
Sanheim scored a highlight-reel goal midway through the third period, but the veteran defenseman was a force on the blue line all night, getting involved physically as much as he has all season. Sanheim keyed a remarkable defensive performance from the Flyers against the NHL\u2019s third-ranked offense in the regular season, holding the Penguins to just 17 shots. Sanheim\u2019s partner, Rasmus Ristolainen \u2014 playing in the first playoff game of his 13-year career \u2014 also dialed up the physicality, drilling Rust just 20 seconds into the first period.<\/p>\n
Classic Malkin<\/p>\n
The full Evgeni Malkin experience was on display in this one.<\/p>\n
Malkin was out of control at times in the first period, as the playoffs\u2019 energy brought out his ornery side. He face-washed players behind play, had words with the Flyers bench and took himself out of the action on a couple of occasions by looking for hits. Malkin was also guilty of a couple of terrible giveaways, one of which led to a Philadelphia breakaway.<\/p>\n
Malkin has been participating in the Stanley Cup playoffs for two decades, yet he looked unable to control his emotions for most of the night.<\/p>\n
Of course, in classic Malkin fashion, he then evened the score late in the second period on a shot from the right circle, sending the sellout crowd at PPG Paints Arena into a frenzy.<\/p>\n
This story will be updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2013 Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby and his future Hall of Fame teammates returned to the playoffs.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,4,56,100],"class_list":{"0":"post-555718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-philadelphia-flyers","11":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116429149879549354","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}