Penguins fans take to streets to celebrate Stanley Cup win

The Penguins’ depth, along with money goaltending from the 22-year-old rookie Matt Murray, has helped them take a 3-1 lead in the National Hockey League championship series. This acknowledges him as the most valuable player in the season’s playoffs.

Crosby was awarded with the Con Smythe Trophy for his performance in the Finals; adding another accolade to his resume. Crosby said he wasn’t thinking about 2009 all that much when he held the trophy for the second time. “Everyone has a part in this”. “How can you ask for anything better than this?”

Not a bad finish for a guy who looked ordinary in the season’s first quarter and a team that was among the most disappointing during the first half of the season. The Penguins won 3-1 to w. Mike Sullivan replaced Mike Johnston as coach in December following the Penguins slow start.

The second period featured a superb effort from the Sharks, but it netted them only one goal – and it just might have wiped them out when it came to the crucial, and crushing, third period in the deciding game of the Stanley Cup Finals at SAP Center on Sunday night.

Thirty-one of the 32 teams that have fallen behind 3-1 in the Stanley Cup final have been eliminated.

Crosby also walked away from the game last night with a little extra hardware. They finished the final period of the season with two – yes, two – shots on goal as Pittsburgh’s defensive depth showed, playing one of their best periods as a unit of the season when it mattered most.

With the Stanley Cup in the building and the champagne on ice, it was the Penguins who came out with desperation in the third and limited the Sharks to two shots, while Patric Hornqvist sealed the win with an empty-net goal with 62 seconds to play.

Phil Kessel of the Pittsburgh Penguins celebrates with the Stanley Cup. Still, that pales in comparison to last season’s first-round meeting between Montreal and the Ottawa Senators, which averaged 3.2 million viewers per game.

The power play was an issue for the Sharks nearly from the start of the Stanley Cup Final. “We cared. We cared a lot”. Couture is only the 5th player to reach 30 points since the 1995-96 playoffs and the first since Daniel Briere had 30 points in 2009-10. Sullivan’s intention upon his promotion was to play to the strengths of the team’s best players.

Pittsburgh captured the Cup with a 2-1 win over San Jose in Game 6 and current Penguins Nick Bonino, Carl Hagelin, Ben Lovejoy, Chris Kunitz and Matt Cullen now touching it and hoisting it as champions. For San Jose, it was a disappointing end to a season that saw them advance to their first ever Stanley Cup Final. But the Penguins jumped ahead for the fifth time in six games this series after Dainius Zubrus was sent off for tripping when Crosby’s line didn’t allow San Jose to leave its own zone. Dumoulin delayed at the left point, turning Sharks’ penalty-killing forward Melker Karlsson around, then fired through the right winger’s legs and past the screened Jones at 8:16. Jones made up for it late in the period with one sequence that started with a save against Crosby on the rush and ended with a pad save that robbed Conor Sheary to keep it 1-0.