Rookie Rust puts Penguins in Stanley Cup final

The hours before the biggest game of Bryan Rust's life were restless.

The nap he tried to sneak in never materialized. The Pittsburgh Penguins rookie forward was too wound up.

"I was just staring at the ceiling, daydreaming," Rust said.

Yet even those daydreams didn't compare to the reality.

The 24-year-old from Pontiac, Michigan, who began training camp hoping just to make the team scored both of Pittsburgh's goals in Thursday's 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final.

Pittsburgh will host the Western Conference champion San Jose Sharks in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final on Monday night.

In a building littered with stars, it was the relentlessness of Rust and the steadiness of 22-year-old Canadian goaltender Matt Murray that provided the difference as the Penguins reached the final for the first time since 2009.

"I'm in that mode where I'm getting the bounces and the breaks right now," Rust said.

Rust and his teammates are earning them. The Penguins rallied from a 3-2 series deficit by controlling the final two games, winning 5-2 in Tampa in Game 6, then backing it up with what coach Mike Sullivan said "might have been the most complete 60-minute effort we had."

In disarray in December when Sullivan took over for Mike Johnston, the Penguins sprinted through April and May and will head into June with a chance to win the franchise's fourth Cup, one that would serve as a bookend to its last triumph seven years ago, when stars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were still in their early 20s.

They're older now. Wiser. And undaunted by a series of postseason failures that made it seem the window on their primes was closing.

Yet here they are after dispatching the New York Rangers in five games, the Presidents' Trophy-winning Washington Capitals in six and the defending Eastern Conference champion Lightning in seven.

"They played better hockey than us the whole series," said Tampa Bay defenseman Anton Stralman, who lost a Game 7 for the first time after starting his career 7-0 when pushed to the limit.

Jonathan Drouin scored his fifth goal of the playoffs for the Lightning and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 37 saves, but it wasn't enough to send Tampa Bay back to the final for a second straight year.

Captain Steven Stamkos had two shots in 11:55 in his return from a two-month layoff while dealing with blood clots. His best chance came on a breakaway in the second period that deflected off Murray and trickled wide.

"I thought I beat him," Stamkos said. "It just went through him and out the other side. It was close, but we didn't generate enough offensively to win a game."

Mostly because the Penguins didn't let them. It's part of what Sullivan calls "playing the right way," a way abetted by the influx of speed brought in by GM Jim Rutherford.

That group includes Rust, who forced his way onto the roster thanks to feverish skating and a self-confidence that belies his 5-foot-11 frame.

That effort - or "desperation level" as Crosby calls it - provided the Penguins with the boost they needed to overcome history.

Pittsburgh had dropped five straight Game 7s at home, including a 1-0 loss to Tampa Bay in a 2011 series in which both Crosby and Evgeni Malkin missed due to injury.

That loss had become symbolic of the Penguins' postseason shortcomings following their gritty run to the Cup in 2009.