The Dallas Stars have finally made it back to the Western Conference finals. It took the eighth longest game in NHL history to do it.

Brenden Morrow scored a power-play goal 9:03 into the fourth overtime as the host Stars eliminated the pesky San Jose Sharks 2-1 in a game that ended early this morning Dallas time — the longest game in the NHL playoffs this season, and the longest in San Jose history.

The Stars are going to the conference finals for the first time since 2000, when they returned to the Stanley Cup Finals the year after winning the franchise's only championship. They will face Detroit, which wrapped up its second-round sweep of Colorado on Thursday night.

After winning the first three games in the series, the Stars finally knocked out the Sharks on the third try and avoided having to go to San Jose for a deciding game. The win came after having two apparent goals disallowed following video reviews in Game 5, and Evgeni Nabokov's sensational glove save early in the first overtime of Game 6 — well before midnight.

Penguins 3, Rangers 2 (OT): Marian Hossa scored his second goal of the game 7:10 into overtime and host Pittsburgh rallied after giving up a two-goal lead to beat New York and advance to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in seven years.

Sidney Crosby began a rush into the Penguins end with a pass to Pascal Dupuis, who attempted to give it back to Crosby. The puck trickled away but ended up on Hossa's stick, and he beat Henrik Lundqvist from the slot for his fifth of the playoffs to end New York's season. The Penguins won the series 4-1.

The Penguins, the Eastern Conference's worst team only two years ago, will meet the cross-state Philadelphia Flyers, the conference's worst team last season, in the first all-Pennsylvania conference final. The teams haven't met in the postseason since the Flyers' six-game victory in a 2000 second-round series best remembered for Philadelphia's five-overtime win in Game 4, which occurred eight years to the day Sunday.

Jaromir Jagr, the leading scorer in the playoffs with 15 points, didn't get a goal in perhaps his last game for New York, though he told NBC that he wants to play for another four seasons and would like to stay with the Rangers. He was a force throughout the game, drawing three of the first four penalties against Pittsburgh after getting three goals in the previous two games.