PITTSBURGH (AP) The sluggish opening three months. The so-so finish. The only occasional attention to detail on defense. None of it matters anymore.The playoffs are here. The champs are Jonathan Marchessault Jersey , too.Sidney Crosby and the Penguins provided proof in Pittsburgh’s 7-0 dismantling of the Philadelphia Flyers in the opening game of their first-round series Wednesday night.Crosby performed more stick wizardry on his way to his third postseason hat trick, Evgeni Malkin added a highlight-reel goal of his own and the Penguins overwhelmed their seemingly overmatched cross-state rivals to begin their quest for a third straight Stanley Cup with a blowout that seemed to indicate the grudge match could be a mismatch.Not that Pittsburgh’s captain wanted to buy into any sort of message sending, even after the Penguins became only the fifth team in NHL history to win a series opener by at least seven goals.”I mean, it’s one game,” Crosby said. ”Whether it’s 7-0 or 1-0 or double overtime, it’s one game. A big part in the playoffs is to get better every game and to adjust, and that’s the way we have to look at it.”That might be a frightening proposition for the rest of the NHL. It certainly is for the Flyers, who have lost all five meetings with Pittsburgh this season, giving up at least five goals each time. Nothing that happened during the regular season, however, compared to Wednesday night. The Penguins pumped five goals in the first 29:01 to chase goalie Brian Elliott, and the Flyers simply could not keep pace.”It was one of the worst games I’ve been a part of,” Flyers forward Claude Giroux said.Philadelphia coach Dave Hakstol mercifully pulled Elliott after Crosby swatted Brian Dumoulin’s point shot out of the air and knocked it by a stunned Elliott to put the Penguins up 5-0 just before the game’s midway point. Elliott stopped 14 of 19 shots before being replaced by Petr Mrazek. Mrazek made 12 saves, but Hakstol indicated he’s likely to go with Elliott again in Friday’s Game 2.Whoever is in net for the Flyers, it won’t matter if the play in front of them isn’t better. Philadelphia’s power play went 0 for 4 and didn’t even generate a shot.”They beat us from pretty much every aspect tonight, starting from the net out Marc-Andre Fleury Jersey ,” Elliott said. ”Everybody just has to be better.”Jake Guentzel had a goal and three assists for Pittsburgh. Bryan Rust and Carl Hagelin also scored. Matt Murray stopped 24 shots for his third straight playoff shutout.The Flyers stressed the need to stay out of the penalty box and put together three disciplined, competitive periods if they wanted to put an abrupt halt to Pittsburgh’s run at history. It didn’t happen. Not even close.The Penguins jumped on Philadelphia early. Elliott stopped Kris Letang’s slap shot with his blocker only to see the long rebound go right to Rust, who ripped it over Elliott’s right shoulder to give the Penguins the lead 2:38 into the game.Philadelphia’s best chance at staying in it came minutes later, but Scott Laughton whiffed on his first attempt from the doorstep and Murray made a sprawling glove save on Laughton’s second try to preserve Pittsburgh’s lead.”If that goes in, it’s 1-1 and maybe we’re talking about a different result,” Crosby said.Moments later, Hagelin expertly redirected Patric Hornqvist’s shot past Elliott 10:07 into the game. Malkin drew a hooking penalty to negate a Pittsburgh power play, and when he emerged from the penalty box, he whizzed past three Flyers in one sequence, darting by Jakub Voracek, slipping past Giroux and then fending off Shayne Gostisbehere before flicking a backhand past Elliott to put the Penguins up 3-0 before the series was 15 minutes old.All that before Crosby got involved.The two-time MVP has a knack for scoring in unorthodox ways. He beat Montreal’s Carey Price with an intentional double-deflection and smacked a rebound out of air in overtime to top New Jersey within a span of eight days last month.His first of the playoffs was just as impressive and provided the exclamation point on a night Pittsburgh looked every bit the threat to become the first team since the New York Islanders of the early 1980s to capture three straight Cups.NOTES: Crosby’s hat trick tied Pittsburgh owner and Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux for the most postseason hat tricks in franchise history. … Murray hasn’t allowed a goal since Game 4 of the 2017 Stanley Cup finals, a span of 206:26. … The Penguins, who had the league’s top-ranked power play during the regular season, went 1 for 4 with the man advantage. … Pittsburgh C Derick Brassard, who missed time late in the regular season with a lower-body injury, had an assist in 13:44. … Injured Steelers LB Ryan Shazier Nate Schmidt Jersey , who is recovering from spine stabilization surgery and has already been ruled out for the 2018 season, stood up and led the sell-out crowd in a pre-game cheer.— LAS VEGAS (AP) A year ago at this time the Vegas Golden Knights had one minor league player on an otherwise empty roster and no idea what to expect when an entire team was finally assembled.Now, they are two wins away from playing for the Stanley Cup.The best story in sports got even better Wednesday night on the Las Vegas Strip, where the Golden Knights continued their improbable run toward the Cup final with a 4-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets. Before a raucous crowd of 18,477 newly minted hockey fans, the expansion team like no other won a second straight against the Jets to take a 2-1 lead in the Western Conference final.As much as 500-1 to win the Stanley Cup in this gambling city’s sports books when the season began, the players that like to refer to themselves as the Golden Misfits are now incredibly the odds-on favorites to win it all.In a city built on losers, the first major pro franchise could be the winner no one expected – even the players cast off from their former teams.Misfits, they’re not. But many of them had never even met before last summer’s expansion draft, and now they’re on the brink of the Stanley Cup finals.”I don’t think anyone saw us here,” said Marc Andre Fleury, the three-time Stanley Cup winner who was left unprotected in the expansion draft by Pittsburgh. ”I’m really proud to be part of this season.”On a night when Fleury made one spectacular save after another, the Knights were just good enough to take the advantage in the series. They held onto a one-goal advantage most of the third period, despite being outplayed and outshot by the Jets.The grudges they once held against their former teams are gone. But they’ve played the entire season with a chip on their shoulders after being judged expendable by their former employers.”We all came here with the right mindset,” said James Neal, who had a goal and an assist in the win. ”No one likes to be left unprotected.”That the Knights were competitive in their first season wasn’t a total surprise. The NHL set up the expansion draft so teams couldn’t hold onto all of their top players http://www.goldenknightsshoponline.com/authentic-oscar-dansk-jersey , and the Knights wasted no time in making Fleury the backbone of the new team.What did surprise a lot of people in hockey was that general manager George McPhee nailed just the right combination of speed up front to go with the stellar goalkeeping. And so far they’ve held their own speed-wise in the series against the Jets, a team built on speed itself.”They’re a quick team, for sure,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said. ”When we’re fast we look faster, too. It’s the ebb and flow of the game.”The Knights are not only the hottest ticket on the Strip, but the hottest thing in a city of 2 million. Las Vegans have embraced their first major pro franchise and opposing players often talk about the atmosphere inside the T-Mobile Arena.Away from the arena it’s more of the same. Golden Knights merchandise is everywhere in the city and hundreds of fans show up just to watch practice at the team’s facility in the suburbs. Homegrown baseball hero Bryce Harper is such a big fan he has bats with Golden Knights logos, and singer Carrie Underwood offered (it was declined) to sing the national anthem after her Nashville Predators were eliminated.And if the Jets drove past Caesars Palace on their way to the game they might have noticed the statue of Caesar was holding a Knights hockey stick.Fleury, who made spectacular back-to-back saves that left him sprawled across the ice while the Knights were clinging to a 3-2 lead in the third period, was asked after what he would have thought before the season if someone told him the team would be within two wins of the Stanley Cup finals.”Probably laugh a little bit,” he said.No one is laughing now as the Knights try and make history as an expansion team turned Stanley Cup champion. The team has defied the odds since the opening game of the season, and bookies are having a hard time finding anyone to bet against them now.They were Vegas Strong, starting the season just after the murderous Oct. 1 rampage just down the street from the arena that took 58 lives in the worst mass shooting ever in the U.S. They became Vegas Born, which has resonated in a city where so many people are from elsewhere.Call them what you want. But soon you may be calling them Stanley Cup champions.”We’re just a bunch of hockey players that wanted to find a home,” Jonathan Marchessault said a few games ago. ”And we did.”—-Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg