Playoffs - Fri, 24 May - Results

Ottawa v Pittsburgh 2-6 - Game 5 - The Pittsburgh Penguins are going to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since they won the Stanley Cup in 2009, and they are ready to attack the penultimate hurdle while hitting a perfect stride. Pittsburgh finished a thorough dismantling of the Ottawa Senators with a 6-2 victory Friday night in Game 5 at Consol Energy Center. It is the first Stanley Cup Playoff series Pittsburgh has clinched at home since the 2009 run to a championship when they eliminated the Philadelphia Flyers at Mellon Arena in the Eastern Conference Finals. The top-seeded Penguins will play the winner of the other Eastern Conference Semifinal between the fourth-seeded Boston Bruins and the sixth-seeded New York Rangers. Boston leads that best-of-7 series 3-1 with Game 5 on Saturday in Boston (5:30 p.m. ET; NBCSN, RDS, TSN). Brenden Morrow, Kris Letang and Evgeni Malkin also scored as Pittsburgh continued its habit of offensively blitzing opponents at virtually every turn. The Penguins have played 11 games through two rounds of the playoffs and have reached at least four goals in nine of them. They scored 13 goals in the final 100 minutes of this series and have 47 goals this postseason, 12 more than the Bruins, who sit second. The Game 5 result illustrated why Pittsburgh can dominate offensively on any given night. Four players scored and five other players got an assist as the Penguins' depth completely wore on an Ottawa team going up in weight class for this series.

The seventh-seeded Senators had written a great story in the first round, upsetting the second-seeded Montreal Canadiens in a five-game shocker that featured an otherworldly performance by goalie Craig Anderson. In this round, the Penguins made Anderson look human; he allowed 20 goals in the five games and was pulled twice. It also might have marked an unappealing end to the career of Daniel Alfredsson, the Ottawa captain, who has been coy about his future. He scooped up the puck at the conclusion of Wednesday's Game 4, fueling speculation it might have been his last home game. Minutes later, he said in his postgame comments that the Senators probably couldn't win three games in a row because of the Penguins' depth and power play, an observation that made headlines for the 48 hours leading up to Game 5. The offense Pittsburgh generated meant goalie Tomas Vokoun again only had to play mistake-free hockey. He did that for the most part, allowing a goal by Milan Michalek just as a Pittsburgh penalty expired in the second period, and a cosmetic third-period goal by Kyle Turris. Vokoun finished with 29 saves. In the second period, Neal continued his recent hot streak, scoring a power-play goal at 7:38 when Anderson misplayed a shot by Letang from behind the net and Neal pushed the loose puck past the goal line. Neal added an unassisted goal 11:07 into the third period when he pickpocketed Ottawa defenseman Erik Karlsson and beat Anderson. Neal finished the hat trick when his long rush up the ice culminated in a wrister past Anderson with 2:39 remaining. Neal had five goals in the last two games and nine points in the series. Morrow, who did not play Game 4 due to an injury, scored Pittsburgh's first goal 6:25 into Game 5, driving hard and beating Ottawa defenseman Jared Cowen to the front of the net to get into position to deflect a Mark Eaton pass past Anderson. The pass hit both Morrow's stick and his skate before going in and was reviewed before being upheld as a goal. It was the fourth time this series Pittsburgh scored first, and the third time that goal came in less than seven minutes. The Penguins have a League-best 16 first-period goals this postseason. That early dominance was the foundation for the Penguins, who changed a closely contested series through the first three games into a blowout across the final two.