Sid & the Kids 4 wins away

Pittsburgh routed the Flyers 6-0 to win the Eastern Conference finals.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Sid and The Kids are off to the Stanley Cup finals, thanks to a dominating run by a younger-than-young Pittsburgh Penguins team that has taken only two seasons to transform itself from one of the NHL’s worst to one of its best.

Ryan Malone, the one Penguins player with firsthand memories of the team’s two previous Stanley Cup appearances, scored twice and set up a third goal and Pittsburgh routed Philadelphia 6-0 Sunday to win the Eastern Conference finals.

The Penguins, dominating Game 5 from the start with Malone and Evgeni Malkin scoring in the first 10 minutes, will play the winner of the Detroit-Dallas series for the Stanley Cup.

“It’s unbelievable just to realize we’re four wins away,” defenseman Ryan Whitney said. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet that these next few games are the Stanley Cup finals.”

Marian Hossa had a goal and three assists and Sidney Crosby, the 20-year-old captain of a team that was the Eastern Conference’s worst two seasons ago, added two assists. Jordan Staal, only 19, scored his third goal in two games and fourth of the series. Pascal Dupuis, an Atlanta teammate of Hossa’s before the two were dealt to Pittsburgh at the trading deadline, also scored.

Pittsburgh, one of the youngest teams to play for a championship in any major pro sport, goes for the Cup for the first time since 1992, when Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux — long before he bought the team — led the Penguins to their second title in two seasons. Malone was the only current Penguins player who was there, along for the ride as the 12-year-old son of then-Penguins scouting director and former player Greg Malone.

“Never, never would have thought it,” Ryan Malone said of someday playing for the Cup himself. “I don’t think I realized until my junior year of college (at St. Cloud State) I would have a chance to play pro hockey. ... It’s pretty special, pretty special and I definitely feel privileged.”

Crosby was presented with the conference championship trophy, but it remained on the presentation table at mid-ice as neither Crosby nor any other Penguins player touched it. By superstition, most teams decline to handle any trophy unless it’s the Stanley Cup.

Crosby said, “We all realized it’s not the one we want to be holding.”

“We want the big trophy,” Hossa said.

What a transformation for a Penguins team that had four consecutive last-place teams from 2002-06, allowing the franchise to draft key components such as Crosby, the 21-year-old Malkin and 23-year-old goalie Marc-Andre Fleury. In any other major pro sport, most or all would likely be in college or the minors due to their age.

Fleury, like Crosby a No. 1 draft pick when Greg Malone was running the Penguins’ draft, made 21 saves in yet another impressive performance and is 22-4-1 since late November.

The Penguins are winning with a commitment to defense that often was lacking with a franchise that has long had a preference for goal scorers such as Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr rather than goal stoppers. They’re also winning with a coach, Michel Therrien, who was hired by previous management and, despite overseeing the fourth-best single-season turnaround in NHL history only last season, was given only a one-year contract extension.