Penguins sweat out a win over Carolina

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Playing without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, the Pittsburgh Penguins turned to their other centers and avoided another third-period meltdown at home.

Dustin Jeffrey, Mark Letestu and Pascal Dupuis scored and the Penguins held off the Carolina Hurricanes 3-2 on Saturday night for their first win in two tries without its injured superstar duo.

“When those guys are out of the lineup, it becomes more of a scoring by committee,” said Jeffrey, called up from the minors this week to replace Malkin. “I think all of our forwards have to step up. We didn’t do a very good job [in a 2-0 loss Thursday] in Jersey. As a group, we played a lot better tonight.”

The Penguins limited Carolina’s chances until Sergei Samsonov and Eric Staal scored over the final 4:25. That made things interesting and incited memories of two blown late two-goal leads this season at Consol Energy Center.

Twelve days earlier, Boston scored four times in the final 3:23, turning a 2-0 Penguins’ lead into a home loss. Two months to the day before that, the Bruins won 7-4 despite entering the third down 4-2.

“It was a little frustrating when it’s 3-0 and then such a short time later it’s 3-2,” goalie Marc-Andre Fleury said. “It happened so quick, but we held on at the end and held them off.”

No NHL team has more elite depth at center than Pittsburgh, but Crosby missed his eighth consecutive game due to a concussion. Malkin has sat out two because of a sore left knee and a sinus infection.

That left Jordan Staal as the Penguins’ No. 1 center. Eric’s younger brother didn’t score, but he had an assist and was the only player on his team to be a plus-2 in 20:30 of ice time — tops among Pittsburgh forwards.

Staal was on the ice during most of the final frantic minutes, directed to shut down his brother’s line as Carolina pressed for the equalizer.

Pittsburgh has won four of five and is 4-3-1 without Crosby. The Hurricanes have lost three of four.