Philadelphia FlyersSidney Crosby has five points in five games. Evgeni Malkin has scored twice. Kris Letang has scored twice. The Pittsburgh Penguins, written off across the league before this series began, are one win from a Game 7 against a Philadelphia Flyers team that controlled the first two games and has not been able to put them away since.
Philadelphia leads 3-2. Game 6 is Wednesday night at the Wells Fargo Center, and the Flyers are favored at home, in front of a building that has waited a long time for a night like this. But Pittsburgh just won 3-2 in Game 5 at PPG Paints Arena to extend the series, and the storyline that everyone wrote in October - that this Penguins core was finally too old, too slow, and too thin to compete - has not held up the way it was supposed to.
The Flyers came in with a clear plan and executed it for two games. Win on the road. Lock down the front of the net. Force Pittsburgh to beat them with their depth. They got a 3-2 win in Game 1 and a 3-0 shutout in Game 2 - a humbling night for the Penguins on home ice. Then they took Game 3 at home 5-2 and looked like a team about to finish the job.
Then Pittsburgh switched goalies. Coach Mike Sullivan moved off Tristan Jarry and gave the net to Arturs Silovs, the 24-year-old who carried Vancouver to a Game 7 against Edmonton in 2024. Silovs has played the last two games for Pittsburgh and stopped 43 of 47 shots. He has a .915 save percentage in this series. He is the reason the Penguins are still alive.
What Philadelphia Got Right
The Flyers earned this lead. They were the better five-on-five team for the first three games and they generated the cleaner looks in the offensive zone. Daniel Vladar has been exactly what they needed in net - a .914 save percentage across all five games, calm under pressure, taking away the high-danger chances Pittsburgh's veteran forwards have created.
Their defense corps has been the surprise. Travis Sanheim has two goals and three points and has logged the heaviest minutes against the Crosby line. Rasmus Ristolainen has four points and has been physical without crossing the line that costs the Flyers special-teams time. Trevor Zegras, picked up from Anaheim in the offseason and given a top-six role, has four points and looks like the player Philadelphia was betting on when they made the trade.
| Player | GP | G | A | PTS | SOG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sidney Crosby (PIT) | 5 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 15 |
| Evgeni Malkin (PIT) | 5 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 11 |
| Travis Konecny (PHI) | 5 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 14 |
| Trevor Zegras (PHI) | 5 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 12 |
The Flyers also got the first big rookie performance of these playoffs. Porter Martone, the 18-year-old from Brampton who Philadelphia took with the sixth overall pick last summer, has two goals and three points in his first NHL postseason. He scored in Game 2 and Game 4. He is being asked to play 14 minutes a night in elimination hockey and he has not looked nervous.
What Philadelphia has not been able to do is convert chances into closing wins. They were up 3-1 and let the Penguins shut down their power play, which sat at 15.8% in the regular season - dead last in the NHL. Pittsburgh has killed eight of nine Flyer power plays in this series. That is not luck. That is structure, and it has cost Philadelphia at least one game it should have closed.
“They were up 3-1 and let Pittsburgh's penalty kill take away the one weapon that was supposed to swing this series.”
— The Series in One Sentence
What Pittsburgh Has Done
The Penguins have done what teams with three first-ballot Hall of Famers are supposed to do when their season is on the line. They have leaned on the people who have been there.
Crosby has five assists and a goal and is playing 22 minutes a night at age 38. He has made the right read on every overload he has skated into. Rickard Rakell has four points playing on his wing and has been the secondary scoring threat that Pittsburgh needed. Malkin has two goals and is back to taking the high-leverage faceoffs. Letang is logging 26 minutes and has scored twice from the back end.
The depth has been scattered, which is the reason this series is 3-2 and not 3-2 the other way. Connor Dewar, claimed off waivers in February, has two goals. Bryan Rust has been quiet for stretches. Anthony Mantha, signed last summer to give them size on the wing, has zero points. The Penguins are getting what they need from the top of the lineup and not much else, which is why they are losing the five-on-five battle and why Vladar's save percentage looks better than Silovs's.
How Pittsburgh Forces Game 7
Get Crosby clean ice in transition. The Flyers have been content to give him the blue line and trust their gap on the rush. Pittsburgh has to make them pay - one big shift from the top line, one quick strike, and a 1-0 lead changes the entire complexion of a road elimination game.
Then ride Silovs. He is hot. He is unburdened by Pittsburgh's last decade of playoff disappointment. He has nothing to lose. The Penguins have to play in front of him, block shots, eat minutes, and trust that he gives them a chance into the third period.
What Wednesday Night Tells Us
Both teams are at a hinge point. If Philadelphia closes this out at home, the Flyers are through to the second round for the first time since 2012, and a young roster gets a postseason series win that changes its trajectory. If Pittsburgh forces Game 7, the conversation shifts immediately to whether the Penguins, with this core, have one more run in them - and whether Silovs can do it again on the road in 48 hours.
The matchup will swing on three things. Special teams - if Philadelphia gets one power play goal, the math on this game gets very hard for Pittsburgh. The Crosby line versus the Sanheim pairing - whoever wins that battle wins the territory war and probably wins the game. And Silovs against Vladar - both have been excellent, both have the kind of save percentage that would carry a team through April hockey, and the one who blinks first probably loses the series.
The Flyers are 43-27-12, 98pts, and have no games left. They currently rank third in the Metropolitan Division, with 0 games remaining. Their home record is 23-18-0 in the regular season. Wednesday's crowd will be loud from puck drop. They have not closed out a playoff series in front of their fans in 13 years. That is a lot of weight to carry into a game that is being played by an opponent that has nothing left to lose.
Pittsburgh's Top Six
Crosby, Malkin, Rakell, Letang. Five of the six points leaders in the series wear black and gold, and they have been the difference in the two Penguins wins.
Philadelphia's Power Play
15.8% in the regular season, 1-for-9 in this series. If the Flyers cannot generate offense with the man advantage in front of their own crowd, they cannot count on it to bail them out.
The Vladar Crease
He has been a wall, but Pittsburgh outshot Philadelphia 35-22 in Game 5 and started finding rebounds. One Flyer breakdown becomes a tying goal in a hurry.
Silovs in a Hostile Building
He played a Game 7 in Edmonton in 2024 and lost 7-3. Now he gets a Game 6 on the road against a team that has scored five and four goals in this series at home. Can he hold up?
The Penguins have made this series harder than it should have been. They lost a home shutout. They gave up a 5-2 game in Philadelphia. They are still down 3-2. But they have made the Flyers sweat, and Wednesday night, in front of a building that has been waiting more than a decade for a closeout night, that pressure is real.
If Crosby is going to push this team to one more series win - if there is going to be one more April run from this group - it starts with a Game 6 in Philadelphia. He has been here before. The rest of his roster, mostly, has not.