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Staal's hat trick extends Penguins' points streak

Feb 11, 2007 - 6:01 AM TORONTO (Ticker) -- After scoring two early goals, Pittsburgh Penguins rookie Jordan Staal did not think he would need a third.

Staal's third tally of the game at 3:54 of overtime allowed the Penguins to survive a lapse of concentration and post a 6-5 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Russian phenom Evgeni Malkin had a goal and three assists for Pittsburgh, which improved to 11-0-2 in its last 13 games.

"It seems like this team never gives up, and that's what good teams do," Staal said. "They're never satisfied without a win."

The 18-year-old Staal scored the first two tallies of the contest, extending his goal-scoring streak to five games, before Malkin netted his rookie-leading 27th as Pittsburgh jumped to a 3-0 lead midway through the second period.

"It seems like everything is working for me. Hopefully, I can keep it going," Staal said. "I'm just trying to get this team in the playoffs."

However, the Maple Leafs came back from the dead with three tallies in the final 6:35 of the session and took one-goal leads twice in the third before the Penguins knotted the game at 5-5. With 6:11 to go, Maxime Talbot led a rush down the left wing from his own zone and beat goaltender Andrew Raycroft to the glove side with a slap shot for his seventh goal.

"It was 4-3 and we thought we had a stranglehold on it," Toronto coach Paul Maurice said. "Then we got up another one again and we get a rush chance and we think we can finish the game and miss the chance, and it's down and it's in your net."

In the extra session, Staal started a breakout from his own end down the right side. When Toronto defenseman Bryan McCabe went down in the low slot to block an attempted shot, Staal cut to his left and beat Raycroft glove side to complete his first career hat trick.

"We've had a lot of guys chip in, but Jordan has been tremendous for us through this stretch," Penguins veteran right wing Mark Recchi said. "It's been remarkable to me how he's just kept getting better and better since day one of the season.

Captain Mats Sundin, Nik Antropov and McCabe each had a goal and an assist for Toronto, which has lost two straight following a five-game winning streak.

"It was up and down the ice, both teams had good chances," Maurice said. "They're a team that's been playing with a tremendous amount of confidence and they're taking those extra chances. It was a strange game."

Antropov, Sundin and Bates Battaglia erased a 3-0 deficit with goals in the final 6 1/2 minutes of the second period.

"It was a crazy game. We'll take the point, for sure, being down 3-0 early in the game," Sundin said. "We battled back. It was one of those games we felt like in the third period it was our game. We got the lead twice and they found a way to get the goals back pretty much right after we scored. Even though we earned the point, we didn't play a very good hockey game."

McCabe gave the Maple Leafs' a 4-3 lead 65 seconds into the third, when his slap shot from just inside the blue line off a pass from the right point by Alex Steen beat netminder Marc-Andre Fleury glove side. But 54 seconds later, Pittsburgh's Ryan Malone tallied from the right side of the crease off a cross-ice feed by Recchi to even the game.

Boyd Devereaux gave Toronto a 5-4 lead with 8:16 to go in the session. His first shot after receiving a pass from behind the net by McCabe was stopped by Fleury, but he gathered his own rebound and fired it past the fallen goalie for his third of the season.

Toronto center Kris Newbury was taken from the ice on a stretcher with six minutes left in regulation after being knocked unconscious during a fight with Pittsburgh's Ronald Petrovicky. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital for precautionary tests, which revealed no skull or C-spine fracture.