Chris Kunitz scored in the second overtime period of Game 7, sending Pittsburgh back to the finals for the second straight year.
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Penguins are heading back to the Stanley Cup finals.
Chris Kunitz beat Craig Anderson 5 minutes 9 seconds into the second overtime to give the defending champions a 3-2 victory over the Ottawa Senators in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final Thursday night.
Kunitz scored twice, his first two of the playoffs. Justin Schultz added the other goal in his return from an upper-body injury, and Matt Murray stopped 28 shots on his 23rd birthday.
The Penguins are trying to become the first team since the Detroit Red Wings in 1998 to win back-to-back titles. They will host Nashville, the Western Conference champion, in Game 1 on Monday night.
Mark Stone and Ryan Dzingel scored for Ottawa. The Senators rallied twice to tie it.
Craig Anderson made 39 saves but could not get a handle on Kunitz’s shot from just outside the left circle. The Senators are 0-6 in Game 7s in franchise history.
Ottawa came in 0 for 25 years in winner-take-all games, while the Penguins were 0-7 in Game 7s at home in series in which they also dropped Game 6.
Ottawa Coach Guy Boucher told his resilient team not to get caught up in the big picture but instead to focus on the small things, a recipe that carried the Senators through a bumpy transition under their first-year head coach to the brink of a second Cup appearance.
The Penguins, trying to become the first defending champion to return to the finals since Detroit in 2009, came in confident they would advance if they could replicate their dominant Game 6, when they were undone only by Anderson’s brilliance.
For most of the first 30 minutes, loose pucks hopped over sticks to spoil some scoring opportunities.
Kunitz, relegated to the fourth line since returning from injury in the second round, picked up his first postseason goal in a calendar year when he completed a two-on-one with Conor Sheary — a healthy scratch in Games 5 and 6 — by slipping the puck by Anderson 9: 55 into the second period.
The momentum lasted all of 20 seconds. Ottawa responded immediately with Stone — who stretched his left skate to stay onside — firing a wrist shot that handcuffed Murray.
Pittsburgh kept coming. Schultz, returning after missing four games with his injury, zipped a shot from the point through Kunitz’s screen and into the net with 8: 16 left in the third.
Once again, the Penguins could not hold the lead. Dzingel set up at the right post and banged home a rebound off Erik Karlsson’s shot that hit the left post and caromed off Murray’s back right to Dzingel’s stick.
