Quick strikes by Ryan Whitney and Marian Hossa raised the Pittsburgh Penguins to heights not reached since Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr donned the black and gold. Whitney and Hossa scored less than 3 minutes apart in the first period, and the Penguins held the Philadelphia Flyers to 18 shots Tuesday in a 4-1 victory that gave Pittsburgh a 3-0 lead in the Eastern Conference finals. One more win against their cross-state rivals, and the Penguins will advance to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time since Lemieux and Jagr led Pittsburgh to back-to-back titles in 1991 and 92. R.J. Umberger, born in Pittsburgh, answered with a first-period goal for the Flyers, but the Pittsburgh defense then locked them down. That made things easier for Marc-Andre Fleury, who finished with 17 saves after a pair of 4-2 home victories. Ryan Malone scored with 10:02 left to make it 3-1 and silenced a crowd hoping to see Philadelphia get back in it. Instead, the Flyers can be eliminated as soon as Thursday in Game 4. Hossa added an empty-net goal with 53.7 seconds remaining. Pittsburgh, which recorded 25 shots, is 11-1 in these playoffs and has led 3-0 in all three series. Detroit holds the same advantage over Dallas in the West, and can advance with a win Wednesday. The excitement and enthusiasm from the “Flyer-ed Up,” orange-clad fans was dampened by Whitney's power-play goal 5:03 in, then extinguished when Hossa made it 2-0 2:38 later. It was reminiscent of how Pittsburgh took out the Madison Square Garden crowd 1:02 into Game 3 of the second round when Hossa scored against the New York Rangers. Quarterfinals today Russia and Canada could be on a collision course for gold at the World Ice Hockey Championships as the only countries to finish the round robin with unbeaten records. As the top seed out of Group F, defending champion Canada will meet fourth-place finisher Norway in Halifax in a Wednesday quarterfinal. Russia, which placed first in Group E, faces fourth-place Switzerland in the quarterfinals on Wednesday in Quebec City. The other quarterfinals see Finland square off against the United States at Halifax and the Swedes meet the Czech Republic in Quebec. The Russia-Switzerland and Sweden-Czech matchups will be back-to-back games as they ended the round robin groups by playing each other. So if momentum means anything, then give the edge to Sweden and Russia.
