PITTSBURGH — The hours before the biggest game of Bryan Rust’s life were restless. The nap he tried to sneak in never materialized. The Pittsburgh Penguins forward’s mind was simply too busy.
PITTSBURGH — The hours before the biggest game of Bryan Rust’s life were restless. The nap he tried to sneak in never materialized. The Pittsburgh Penguins forward’s mind was simply too busy.
“I was just sitting up there looking at the ceiling,” Rust said.
Yet even those daydreams didn’t compare to the reality: the rookie forward who began training camp hoping just to make the team scored both of Pittsburgh’s goals in a 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals on Thursday night.
Pittsburgh will host Western Conference champion San Jose in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Monday night.
In a building littered with stars, it was the relentlessness of the 24-year-old Rust and the steadiness of 22-year-old goaltender Matt Murray who provided the difference as the Penguins reached the final for the first time since 2009.
“I’m in that mode where I’m getting the bounces and the breaks right now,” Rust said.
Ones Rust and his teammates are earning. The Penguins rallied from a 3-2 deficit by controlling the final two games of the best-of-seven series, winning 5-2 in Tampa Bay in Game 6, then backing it up with what coach Mike Sullivan said “might have been the most complete 60-minute effort we had.”
In disarray in December when Sullivan took over for Mike Johnston, the Penguins have sprinted through April and May and will head into June with a chance to win the franchise’s fourth Cup, one that would serve as a bookend to its last triumph seven years when stars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were still in their early 20s.
They’re older now. Wiser. And undaunted by a series of postseason failures that made it seem the window of their primes were closing. Yet here they are after dispatching the New York Rangers in five games, the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Washington Capitals in six and the defending Eastern Conference champion Lightning in seven.
“They played better hockey than us the whole series,” said Tampa Bay defenseman Anton Stralman, who lost a Game 7 for the first time after starting his career 7-0 when pushed to the limit.