Two more goals followed in the last minute of the period. Sidney Crosby put Pittsburgh in the lead, and then Malkin scored his second with 12 seconds to play and made the visiting crowd shout: “MVP! MVP! MVP!”

The Hurricanes did all they could to get back into the game. The second period was scoreless, but they got one goal back, thanks to Russian Sergey Samsonov, 3-1.

But it was the last success of the night for the host team, as the Penguins appeared to be too strong for them.

Malkin set up Ruslan Fedotenko’s goal, which made the score 4-2, and then Craig Adams and Bill Guerin added two more to settle the final score.

Malkin has shown some very impressive hockey recently, scoring 16 points in his last six games. He also got his first ever play-off hat trick in Game Two of the series against Carolina. His stats in the play-offs are 12 goals and 16 assists (28 points).

The Penguins have a 3-0 lead in the series, and need just one win to progress to the Stanley Cup finals for the second year in a row. They could achieve their task in Game Four to be played in on May 27.