Penguins 3, Blue Jackets 1

Marc-Andre Fleury spent the regular season saying all the right things — and just as importantly, doing all the right things — while watching Matt Murray take his job.

It wasn't easy. Yet the goalie with more wins than any other in the history of Pittsburgh handled the demotion with grace. Never complaining about playing time and doing his best to help the 22-year-old Murray adjust to the grind during his first full season in the NHL.

The Penguins held on to Fleury at the trade deadline, keenly aware that the time may come when they would need him to coax a little more magic out of his No. 29 sweater.

That time arrived Wednesday night against Columbus. When Murray tweaked something during pregame warmups , Fleury found himself starting. And for the next couple of hours, it seemed like old times.

Fleury withstood an early push by the Blue Jackets and stopped 31 shots in all as the Penguins opened their Stanley Cup title defense with a victory.

Game 2 is Friday night in Pittsburgh.

"It felt like it's been awhile," Fleury said. "I was a little nervous at the beginning maybe from not expecting it."

Funny, didn't look like it. The Blue Jackets peppered Fleury during a one-sided first period, throwing 16 shots his way while Fleury's teammates mustered just three at the other end of the ice. Fleury stopped them all, and when Pittsburgh finally got it going in the second period, the Blue Jackets couldn't keep pace.

Phil Kessel, Nick Bonino and Bryan Rust scored in the second, with Evgeni Malkin assisting on Rust and Kessel's goals in his first game back after missing the final three weeks of the regular season with an upper-body injury. It was a surge reminiscent of Pittsburgh's sprint to a fourth Cup last spring. Yet it was a push made possible only by Fleury's hot start.

"When he play like this it's much easier for us," Malkin said. "He's just an amazing player and I hope he plays the next game same."

There's a chance Malkin won't have to wait long. Murray will be re-evaluated on Thursday. Considering how comfortable Fleury looked while tying a club record by making his 101st playoff appearance, there's no hurry to rush Murray back out there.

The Blue Jackets, making just their third playoff appearance in franchise history, insisted they wouldn't be overcome by the stakes or the stage. For a long stretch at the start, they weren't. Columbus hogged the puck during the first period but was unable to create the kind of traffic in front of Fleury that could produce a goal. The Penguins blocked 22 shots in front of him and kept his crease clear.

"We're going to have to find a way to get in on the inside and bang away and create more offense," Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella said.

It took all of four minutes of the second period for Pittsburgh to flip momentum completely.

Rust finished a pretty sequence in which Malkin fed the puck to Kessel, who delicately kicked it to Rust in the slot. Rust ripped a shot over Bobrovsky's stick 1:15 into the second to give the Penguins the lead. Kessel doubled the advantage 150 seconds later, biding his time in the left circle on the power play then threading a wrist shot over Bobrovsky's glove to make it 2-0.

"After the second one, we lost ourselves a little bit," Tortorella said.

Bonino camped in front of the Columbus net then pounded home a rebound on the doorstep 16:25 into the second to push Pittsburgh's advantage to three goals and the Blue Jackets never recovered.

After overwhelming the Penguins at the start, Columbus managed just 16 shots over the final two periods and never really came close to threatening as a matchup between the teams that finished with the second and fourth best records in the NHL looked one-sided.

"I think they put us on our heels a little bit, but I think we had a pretty good third period," Columbus forward Brandon Dubinsky said. "Something to build on for Game 2. It's a marathon, it's not a sprint."

Blues 2, Wild 1 (OT)

Joel Edmundson scored for St. Louis at 17:48 of overtime, Jake Allen made a career-high 51 saves and the Blues sneaked into Minnesota to steal Game 1 of their first-round series from the Wild with a victory.

Blues star Vladimir Tarasenko was quiet for most of the night until he drove into a crowd and threaded a pass through the Wild defense to Edmundson, who knocked in the second postseason goal of his career.

Zach Parise tied the game with 22.7 seconds left in regulation for the Wild, whose dominance was thwarted by a stellar performance from Allen.

He made the most saves ever recorded against the Wild in their 16-season history.

Game 2 is Friday in Minnesota.

Sharks 3, Oilers 2 (OT)

Melker Karlsson scored at 3:22 of overtime and San Jose came back to beat Edmonton in Game 1 of their Western Conference series.

The Oilers jumped out to a 2-0 first-period lead only for the veteran Sharks to come back and tie the game with just over 15 minutes to play.

Milan Lucic and Oscar Klefbom scored for the Oilers.

Joel Ward and Paul Martin scored for San Jose.

Edmonton center Connor McDavid, the NHL's leading scorer in the regular season, had one assist in his playoff debut to extend his points streak to 15 games.

It was the first playoff game in the Oilers' new downtown arena and the team's first NHL postseason game in almost 11 years.

Game 2 is Friday in Edmonton.