NEW YORK – Evgeni Malkin and the perfect Pittsburgh Penguins pushed the New York Rangers to the brink of elimination.

Malkin, hours after being announced as a finalist for the NHL MVP award, scored two power-play goals and added an assist to lift Pittsburgh to a 5-3 victory Tuesday night that stretched the Penguins’ lead in the Eastern Conference semifinal series to 3-0.

The Penguins are 7-0 in the postseason, still rolling after a four-game sweep of Ottawa in the first round.

They eked out wins at home in the opening two games against the Rangers, rallying from a 3-0 deficit to win Game 1 and prevailing 2-0 on Sunday on the strength of Marc-Andre Fleury’s shutout.

Pittsburgh, which lost all four road meetings with the Rangers this season, can advance to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2001 as early as Thursday. Only two teams have come back to win a series after trailing 3-0. The 1975 New York Islanders did it to the Penguins in the second round.

Stars 2, Sharks 1

DALLAS – Thanks to an unlikely goal from Mattias Norstrom, the Dallas Stars are one victory shy of the Western Conference finals.

Norstrom scored from the top of the left circle 4:37 into overtime Tuesday night to give the Stars a 2-1 victory over the San Jose Sharks and a commanding 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

Sharks goalie Evgeni Nabokov had already made several impressive saves in the overtime, denying Loui Ericksson twice in the first couple of minutes. The second shot by Ericksson came as he tried to knock in the rebound of Brad Richards’ shot that the goalie kicked away.

But Nabokov had too many bodies around him and couldn’t see the shot by Norstrom, who scored his second goal in 49 playoff games.

He took a pass from Mike Ribeiro and slapped it through the traffic and into the net.

The last time the Stars had a 3-0 series lead was in the first round of the 1999 playoffs, when they swept Edmonton and went on to win the Stanley Cup. This is their 16th postseason series since then.

Dallas can wrap up the series Wednesday night at home.

AP-ES-04-29-08 2244EDT