HOCKEY

Penguins Move to Brink of Cup finals With 4-1 Win

Quick strikes by Ryan Whitney and Marian Hossa raised the Pittsburgh Penguins to heights not reached since Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr donned the black and gold.

Whitney and Hossa scored less than 3 minutes apart in the first period, and the Penguins held the Philadelphia Flyers to 18 shots last night in a 4-1 victory that gave Pittsburgh a 3-0 lead in the Eastern Conference finals. One more win against their cross-state rivals, and the Penguins will advance to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time since Lemieux and Jagr led Pittsburgh to back-to-back titles in 1991 and 92.

GOLF

Sorenstam to Retire This Year

Annika Sorenstam ignored her notes and spoke from the heart. One of golf’s greatest players was leaving the game, and she handled her retirement announcement the way she would a 10-foot birdie putt with a tournament on the line.

With command and composure.

Calling her decision one she’d “been thinking about for a while,” Sorenstam said yesterday she will retire after the season. The 37-year-old Swede ends an LPGA Tour career in which she has won 72 tournaments to date and delivered a defining moment when she teed it up against the men on the PGA Tour.

“I have made a decision to step away from competitive golf after this season,” she said at the Sybase Classic. “Obviously this was a very difficult decision for me to make because I love this game so much. But it’s the right one.”

BASKETBALL

Pistons Eliminate Magic

The Detroit Pistons made just enough shots and stops to advance to the Eastern Conference finals for a sixth straight year. Richard Hamilton scored 19 of his 31 points in the first half, made victory-sealing free throws late in the game and Tayshaun Prince had a key block, helping Detroit hold off the Orlando Magic for a 91-86 win last night in Game 5 of the second-round series.

FOOTBALL

Walsh Meets With Goodell, Specter

A murmur rippled across the room as the NFL revealed the tapes provided by former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh. The cause was not some new revelation of wrongdoing by New England, which was caught last September recording opposing coaches’ signals in violation of league rules. No, the most scandalous tidbit that emerged yesterday after Walsh spent more than six hours meeting separately with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Sen. Arlen Specter? A snippet of tape that showed not football but close-ups of San Diego Chargers cheerleaders performing during a 2002 game. Otherwise, little fresh information surfaced. Asked if he considered the Spygate investigation closed, Goodell said, “As I stand before you today, and having met with Matt Walsh and more than 50 other people, I don’t know where else I would turn.”