Pittsburgh takes series with Malkin hat trick

Evgeni Malkin and the Pittsburgh Penguins finally flexed their offensive muscles.

And they needed every bit of scoring they could muster.

Malkin had a hat trick and the Penguins almost blew a four-goal lead before holding off the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-3 on Monday night to clinch their first-round playoff series in six games.

“It’s more important that we win the game and [end] the series,’’ Malkin said of the 10th time he’s scored three times in a game in his career. “Going into the second round now, you feel so much better when you have confidence. I hope in the next round I can score more.’’

Pittsburgh awaits the winner of the New York-Philadelphia series, with the Rangers leading 3-2 going into Tuesday night’s Game 6.

It’s a good thing for the Penguins that Malkin - scoreless in his past nine playoff games including the first five in the series - finally found the net.

The Blue Jackets, closer to making tee times than thinking about a Game 7, scored three times in a 4:52 span in the third period to turn up the pressure on the Penguins, the overwhelming favorite before the series got under way.

“We’re a proud group in here,’’ forward Brandon Dubinsky said. “We didn’t want to get embarrassed on home ice. If it was going to be our last game of the season, we didn’t want to have any quit. We didn’t have any quit in this locker room all season. We just kept pushing and pushing.’’

Brandon Sutter also scored before leaving with an injury and Matt Niskanen had two assists as the Penguins became the first team in the series to score first and win - but barely. Marc-Andre Fleury made 24 saves and made a couple of big stops.

“It was a good test,’’ he said of the wild last few minutes.

Coach Dan Bylsma said the toe-to-toe matchup heralded a new level of contentious play between the teams.

‘’We’ve got a rivalry going here with the Jackets,’’ he said. ‘’They gave us everything we could handle and it was a nice series for them. That was an extremely tough first-round opponent.’’

Fedor Tyutin, Artem Anisimov and Nick Foligno scored for Columbus, Foligno’s redirect of a Tyutin shot cut the gap to a goal with 4:47 left. The Penguins were hard pressed to fight off the aggressive Blue Jackets after goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who also had 24 saves, was pulled for an extra attacker with under two minutes left.

AP