The Pittsburgh Penguins are headed back to the Stanley Cup finals after beating the Carolina Hurricanes 4-1 to sweep up Eastern Conference title on Tuesday. Pittsburgh lost to the Detroit Red Wings last year in a six-game NHL finals. If the Stanley Cup champion Red Wings beat the Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday in the West finals, it will set up the first finals rematch since the Edmonton Oilers and the New York Islanders met in 1983 and 1984. Max Talbot had a goal and an assist, Ruslan Fedotenko and Bill Guerin also scored, and Craig Adams added an empty-netter for Pittsburgh. Captain Sidney Crosby had two assists to extend his point streak to six games, and Marc-Andre Fleury stopped the final 30 shots he faced in shutting down Carolina over the final 58 minutes. The Penguins outscored the Hurricanes 20-9 in the series, netted at least three goals in each game, and trailed for a total of 20 minutes, 30 seconds in advancing to the Cup finals for the fourth time. Pittsburgh is the first team since the 2000-01 New Jersey Devils to get to the finals in consecutive years, and the first runner-up to return to the finals since Edmonton in 1983 and 84. That experience could help this year. “Just knowing what to expect, hopefully there'll not be too much surprises,” Crosby said. “We talk about experience all the time, but it is hard to learn.” Last year, the Penguins stuck to superstitious tradition and didn't touch the Eastern Conference championship trophy. That led to a loss, so this time Crosby picked it up and skated away with it. “We didn't touch it last year and things did not go the way we wanted to, so we switched it up,” Crosby said. “We know what we want.” Eric Staal scored for the first time in the series for the Hurricanes, and Cam Ward made 21 saves but lost a playoff series for the first time in his NHL career. He had been 5-0 in elimination games for the Hurricanes, who were on the losing end of the handshake line for the first time since 2002, when they lost to the Red Wings in the Cup finals. In their only other playoff appearance since then, they won the Cup in 2006. In this series, Carolina led only three times and entered Game 4 with no players scoring more than two points _ Pittsburgh entered with five. The Hurricanes were swept for the first time since 1989, when the franchise was still the Hartford Whalers and was beaten by the Montreal Canadiens.
