Pens deliver on promise, return to Pittsburgh for Game 7

Before Game 6 Evgeni Malkin delivered a promise to the Penguins fans. They would return to Pittsburgh and they would win Game 6. Some would have been a bit wary of saying such a thing but a dominant comment like that seems to have had an effect as the Penguins dominated Game 6 with ease.

Pittsburgh were lucky early in the game after Tampa appeared to take the lead off Drouin's early goal. The Lightning gained a 3 man presence in the zone and after a neat pass across the net Murray was out of position. Drouin tapped the puck into an empty net to seemingly give the  Lightning the win. However, Sullivan correctly challenged the call and it was called back to give the Pens some luck and a reset.

From that point, they didn't waste it. Kessel scored his fourth goal of the play off series and his 9th in total for the whole post season with a neat batted goal in mid-air on a 5-on-3 powerplay. The first goal came late in the game and Kessel was lucky to get the right deflection after Crosby's pass opened him up.

In the second period the Penguins continued to press and Kris Letang scored to make amends for his poor performance in Game 5. His shot was screened in front of Vasilevskiy who had no chance of stopping it. Sidney Crosby then scored possibly one of the best goal of this post season. He received the puck on the blue line and completely blew Stralman's tires as he eased past before shooting through Vasilevskiy's five hole with only 26 seconds left in the second period to give the Penguins a 3-0 lead.

Tampa, as expected, fought back. They weren't going to go down without a fight and Brian Boyle was quite lucky for his first goal just over 5 minutes into the third period. Boyle's shot was deflected in by Phil Kessel's errant stick to give the Bolts hope and they made it a 1 goal game just 8 minutes later. Boyle again. This time his shot from just outside he face-off zone went high on Murray and pinged in off the bar.

Some might have thought that the Penguins were going to blow it, like they blew the leads against the Lightning in Game 6.  But this was a different response. With Tampa putting on the pressure it left their defence exposed and Bryan Rust received a pass at the logo and skated down the ice before dekeing around Vasilveskiy to restore Pittsburgh's two goal lead. Bonino added an empty net later on to settle it.

If the Penguins can play like this in Game 7 then they will take it. They need their stars to show again and if they do that then they can feel confident in their chances. The Lightning will come hard, they won't want to blow two chances to knock the Penguins off. The first period will be huge, as will the rest of the game.