PITTSBURGH – Brayden Schenn scored twice, Vincent Lecavalier added his first goal in nearly three months, and the Philadelphia Flyers had little trouble with the injury-depleted Pittsburgh Penguins 4-1 on Wednesday night.
Carlo Colaiacovo chipped in a rare goal for the Flyers, who ended a nine-game, road-losing streak. Steve Mason stopped 24 shots for Philadelphia as the Flyers won their seventh straight game in Pittsburgh.
Sidney Crosby scored his 300th career goal for the Penguins and boosted his NHL-leading point total to 80, but Pittsburgh mustered little offense on a night the team played without injured stars Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 27 saves for the Penguins, who remained tied with the New York Islanders for second place in the Metropolitan Division.
Barring a collapse, the Penguins will head to the playoffs for the ninth straight year. The Flyers are heading home when the regular season ends in a couple of weeks.
Those circumstances took a little bit of the sizzle out of one of the NHL's more heated rivalries. Whatever remained was drained by Philadelphia's solid play, a rarity on the road over the last six weeks.
Crosby became the fifth Penguins player to reach 300 goals when he flipped in a rebound off Patric Hornqvist's shot 3:29 into the game. It was his 31st career goal against the Flyers — more than any other team — and gave the Penguins an early boost on a night they were forced to sit Malkin.
The 2012 Hart Trophy winner is dealing with an undisclosed injury, the latest setback in his roller coaster season. Malkin missed six games last month with a lower-body injury but returned to play in a pair of wins over the weekend. He skipped Tuesday's skate with what the coaching staff referred to as a "maintenance day" and was a no-show for the optional skate on Wednesday.
Malkin's absence left Pittsburgh with just 19 skaters. The Penguins are already down to five defensemen while Letang recovers from a concussion. Philadelphia eventually wore Pittsburgh down, something that has happened with regularity for the Penguins against their cross-state rivals regardless of the circumstances.
Lecavalier ended an extended Philadelphia surge by pounding a rebound by a sprawled Fleury with 2:46 left in the first to tie it. The goal was Lecavalier's first since Jan. 3.
The Flyers' momentum continued to build as Pittsburgh struggled to spend any sort of quality time in the Philadelphia zone. Frequent strolls to the penalty box didn't help either.
Schenn put the Flyers in front 12:43 into the second when he cruised down the slot and controlled a bouncing puck before knocking it into the net. Pittsburgh lacked the firepower — or the legs — to keep up. The Penguins failed to create sustained pressure around Mason, and when Schenn deflected in his 16th goal of the season at the end of Philadelphia's fifth power play just 49 seconds into the third, Pittsburgh was done.
Even Colaiacovo got in on the act, beating Fleury with a wrist shot 5:34 into the third for his first goal in more than a year and just his 32nd in his well-traveled 429-game career.
NOTES: The Flyers are 11-1-1 at Consol Energy Center. ... Pittsburgh is 9-14-4 against the Metropolitan Division. ... The game was delayed for several minutes in the second period when the glass behind the Philadelphia net became dislodged after Kunitz checked Nick Schultz into the boards. ... The Penguins begin a three-game road trip in Columbus on Saturday. ... The Flyers play at Carolina on Saturday. ... Mario Lemieux (690), Jaromir Jagr (439), Jean Provonost (316) and Rick Kehoe (312) are the other Penguins with at least 300 goals.
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