The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Detroit Red Wings 4-2 on Tuesday to extend the Stanley Cup finals to the weekend. The Penguins won at home after losing twice in Detroit against the defending champions just as they did last year in the NHL finals. Game 4, which could have been an elimination game for Pittsburgh, will be on Thursday. Either Detroit can take a stranglehold 3-1 lead or the Penguins can make the finals a best-of-three series. Sergei Gonchar's power-play goal midway through the third period pumped up his discouraged Penguins teammates after Detroit pressed for the go-ahead score. Gonchar's slap shot from center point off Evgeni Malkin's pass sailed past Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood as he was screened by Bill Guerin and Sidney Crosby. The Penguins prevented the Red Wings from taking a 3-0 series lead that would have allowed them to clinch their fifth Stanley Cup since 1997 as early as Thursday. “The power play was an unbelievable job by a handful of guys out there, keeping the play alive and giving Gonch a chance,” Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said. Malkin assisted on the first three Penguins goals, giving him 33 points in 20 games, the most in the playoffs since Joe Sakic's 34 for Stanley Cup champion Colorado in 1996. Gonchar, and first-period scores by Max Talbot and Kris Letang, gave the Penguins hope again, just as they did by winning Game 3 by 3-2 on a pair of Crosby goals in last year's finals. The Red Wings went on to win that one in six games. “The urgency has to be there, but at the same time, you have to be smart about how you are playing,” Gonchar said. Talbot added an empty-net score in the final minute. The way they played for much of Game 3, it looked like the Red Wings were trying to bury the Penguins for good. They outshot the Penguins 26-11 following a furious first two periods. One of the few Penguins players at the rink on Monday's day off, he constantly repeated that the Penguins did enough right during their twin 3-1 losses in Detroit to encourage them. Guerin also downplayed the fact 31 of the previous 32 teams to win the first two games at home went on to win the series, saying that meant nothing in these finals. In the series' first wide-open period, the Penguins finally began getting production from their secondary scorers as fourth-line center Talbot and Letang scored, but Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen made it 2-2 after the first period. The Penguins were hoping to open up the play more at home before a sellout crowd decked out in white shirts, and they did that. But in creating more end-to-end play, Pittsburgh also made mistakes that led to goals. Goalie Marc-Andre Fleury made up for many of them, stopping 27 shots and allowing no soft goals of the first two games. Crosby, shut down the first two games and limited to a single assist in three games, left his man to go behind the net shortly after Talbot put a backhander past Chris Osgood. That allowed a wide-open Zetterberg to convert from the right circle at 6:19 for a goal created by Ville Leino driving to the net. About five minutes later, Brooks Orpik's interference penalty on Zetterberg led to Franzen's 12th goal, off a risky cross-ice pass by – yes, him again – Zetterberg as Detroit converted for the 11th time in 34 opportunities on road power plays.
