Pittsburgh star Evgeni Malkin notched his first playoff hat trick as the Penguins beat the Carolina Hurricanes 7-4 on Thursday to open a 2-0 lead in the NHL's Eastern Conference finals series. Pittsburgh's other big-name player Sidney Crosby scored a record-tying sixth goal to start a playoff game this season, yet was upstaged by NHL regular-season scoring leader Malkin, who scored twice in the third period to give him a 25-24 goals edge over Crosby in playoffs. In its two previous playoff rounds, Carolina had bounced back from losing the opener to square it in Game 2, but couldn't manage it this time, even though the Hurricanes tied the game three times. Carolina will host Game 3 on Saturday. Crosby scored with less than two minutes gone and Malkin just over six minutes later. Carolina responded on both occasions, with goals from Chad LaRose and Jussi Jokinen. A Dennis Seidenberg goal put Carolina up 3-2 after the first period. Pittsburgh got the only two goals of the second period through Max Talbot and Chris Kunitz. Kunitz goal with only seven seconds remaining was his first in 24 games The Hurricanes turned to their fourth line to get the goal back as Patrick Eaves scored 2:35 into the third, tying the game 3-3. Carolina stalled after that, unable to match Pittsburgh's speed or the repeated ability of its stars to find open ice for repeated scoring chances. Malkin made it 5-4 with 8:50 gone in the third period. He then made it 6-4 less than four minutes later with a one
