The Penguins quench the Flyers

Crosby's two goals carry the losing Penguins through

Losing and still burning

The Pittsburgh Penguins lost their game in Chicago and kept their flame anyway. That is how qualification night works in a virtual match: each team played its own game, and the one that scored more went through. Pittsburgh needed three goals to outlast the Philadelphia Flyers, who managed two in their own game. For Philadelphia the stakes carried a heavy history. The Flyers had gone dark on qualification night in each of the last three Gauntlets.

Crosby finds the third

Pittsburgh trailed 0:28 in, when Teuvo Teravainen snapped one past Sergei Murashov for the Chicago Blackhawks. Sidney Crosby answered at 6:57 with a wrister, set up by Erik Karlsson. Roman Kantserov then scored twice, the first on the power play, and the Penguins sat two down. Nick Robertson's wrister at 17:51 of the second cut it to one. At 9:17 of the third, Crosby wristed home the tying goal from Connor Dewar and Samuel Girard. Chicago still took the game through Teravainen and a Tyler Bertuzzi tip-in into the empty net, but Pittsburgh already had its three.

Philadelphia stalls at two

At home, the Flyers fell behind the Seattle Kraken on Bobby McMann's power-play wrister and a snap shot from defenseman Ville Ottavainen. Then they surged in the third: Christian Dvorak at 6:07, Trevor Zegras just 1:13 later. That was all they got. Overtime brought no goal, and in a five-round shootout only Matvei Michkov beat Philipp Grubauer before McMann ended it. Philadelphia's candle went cold, while 27 still burn.