Penguins dump Rangers in OT

Marian Hossa scored his second goal of the game 7:10 into overtime and the Pittsburgh Penguins rallied after giving up a two-goal lead to beat the New York Rangers 3-2 on Sunday in Pittsburgh and advance to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in seven years.

Sidney Crosby began a rush into the Penguins end with a pass to Pascal Dupuis, who attempted to give it back to Crosby. The puck trickled away but ended up on Hossa’s stick, and he beat Henrik Lundqvist from the slot for his fifth of the playoffs to end New York’s season. The Penguins won the series 4-1.

The Penguins, the Eastern Conference’s worst team only two years ago, will meet the cross-state Philadelphia Flyers, the conference’s worst team last season, in the first all-Pennsylvania conference final. The teams haven’t met in the postseason since the Flyers’ six-game victory in a 2000 second-round series best remembered for Philadelphia’s five-overtime win in Game 4, which occurred eight years to the day Sunday.

The Rangers, down 2-0 but desperate to swing the series back to New York for what would have been a Game 6 today, got back into the game by scoring twice in less than 90 seconds to tie it early in the third.

Lauri Korpikoski, a 2004 first-round draft pick playing in his first NHL game on a hunch by coach Tom Renney, scored 2:03 into the period with only the second Rangers shot in nearly 17 minutes.

Korpikoski’s wrist shot from the right circle may have deflected off Penguins defenseman Ryan Whitney, who chose not to come out to challenge only Korpikoski’s second career shot. Michal Rozsival, partly making up for his three penalties in the second period, got the first assist.

Given life in a game – and a season – that was beginning to look lost, the Rangers came back to tie it 1:22 later as Nigel Dawes scored on a backhander while cutting across the slot off Scott Gomez’s setup, a shot similar to that he missed in the game’s opening minute.

The turnaround appeared to stun the young Penguins and their towel-waving crowd after a dominating second period in which Pittsburgh outshot the Rangers 17-4 and held them without a shot for nearly 15 minutes.

The pivotal moment of the period may have been when New York’s Chris Drury was unintentionally clipped and bloodied by Penguins forward Ryan Malone’s stick in front of the Pittsburgh net only 92 seconds into the period. Both benches seemed to expect a 4-minute high-sticking penalty – play was stopped briefly to clean up the blood – but there was no call.

There was one when Drury drew a high-sticking major, against Malone no less, late in the third, putting the Rangers in a precarious position to end the game and begin the overtime. But the Rangers killed it off despite being down a man for the first 2:41 of the overtime, but the Penguins used the momentum they regained by constantly pressing on the power play to get Hossa’s game-winner a few minutes later.

Jaromir Jagr, the leading scorer in the playoffs with 15 points, didn’t get a goal in perhaps his last game for New York, though he told NBC that he wants to play for another four seasons and would like to stay with the Rangers. He was a force throughout the game, drawing three of the first four penalties against Pittsburgh after getting three goals in the previous two games.

•Rangers forward Sean Avery was released from the hospital Sunday morning, five days after suffering a season-ending spleen injury in a playoff game.

Avery was in intensive care at St. Vincent’s Medical Center from the time he was admitted Tuesday night, shortly after New York’s Game 3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, until Saturday because of a lacerated spleen, Rangers spokesman John Rosasco said.