The Penguins seemed to love every minute of it. “That was a great effort,” Crosby said. “We don’t want to put ourselves behind like that, but we didn’t quit.”  Crosby helped cap a spectacular comeback, which included the Penguins’ twice scoring two goals within 20 seconds. The Rangers were left trying to make sense of it all.  “It’s over,” Rangers center Scott Gomez said of Game 1. “It doesn’t matter how you lose. We lost it. No use crying over it. We pick ourselves up by the back of our pants and move forward.”  Such a pickup hardly seemed necessary 3:37 into the second period, when the Rangers grabbed an improbable 3-0 lead.  Pittsburgh, having waited nine days since sweeping Ottawa, entered the game as if shot out of a cannon. The Penguins took the first eight shots. Lundqvist made several spectacular saves to keep the Rangers from falling behind. The Rangers had a seven-day layoff after eliminating the Devils in five games and looked far rustier.  While Lundqvist stayed sharp, the Rangers scored 29 seconds into their first power play on a goal by forward Martin Straka. The Rangers came out strong in the second and got another goal when center Chris Drury deflected a slap shot by defenseman Marc Staal that surprised Pittsburgh goalie Marc-André Fleury.  Forward Sean Avery made the score 3-0, firing a wrist shot to the far post 3:37 into the second.  Mellon Arena fell into stupefied silence. The Penguins, for all their firepower, were reeling.  “I didn’t think about much other than that next shift,” Crosby said. “When you’re down by that much, you have to take it a little bit at a time.”  The Penguins drew life off the most unlikely of goals. The checking line forward Jarkko Ruutu threw a pass in front of the net for forward Tyler Kennedy, but the puck bounced off the skate of Rangers defenseman Michal Rozsival and into the net.  The fans had hardly finished celebrating that one when forward Pascal Dupuis took a pass from Crosby and fired a shot past Lundqvist 14 seconds later and the comeback was on.  “In this kind of hockey game, you’re never safe,” said Rangers forward Jaromir Jagr, who hit the post with 13 seconds remaining. “You have to play 60 minutes and don’t look at the score.”  The Penguins managed another two goals in the third — 20 seconds apart. Marian Hossa’s goal bounced in off Gomez’s foot, then forward Petr Sykora got a great pass from Malkin for the go-ahead goal.  The Rangers tied it at 4-4 when Jagr passed to the front of the net for Gomez, who whipped a shot past Fleury with 9:56 left.  The final goal came on a power play after Straka was called for interfering with Crosby on a rush started by Hossa. The puck had already been knocked away from Hossa by Gomez and away from Crosby. But Straka was trying to catch up to the play and ran into Crosby, drawing the call.  Several Rangers complained loudly about the call — including Straka at the end of the game, for which he was given a game misconduct penalty — but Straka would say nothing afterward. He had to watch the winner from the penalty box. It was the only Penguins power-play goal in six chances.  “What a shame the last one happened,” Straka said. “They had a good shot. That’s the way it is sometimes.”  The Rangers were left to contemplate how they had let a 3-0 lead slip away, while the Penguins were applauding their own resiliency.  Both teams were battling some very sloppy ice, turned to near-mush by the 70-degree temperatures in Pittsburgh this week.  “You can tell the defensemen were struggling because the puck was kind of bouncing over sticks,” Fleury said. “The guys did a good job of trying to keep things simple, trying to stick with it.”  The worst bounces of all happened in front of Lundqvist, who seemed stunned by the loss but vowed to push it aside.  “You just have to forget this,” Lundqvist said.  The Rangers hope they can.  Rangers Coach Tom Renney made a lineup change, replacing forward Ryan Hollweg with Colton Orr, saying he believed Orr’s size and forechecking would be beneficial against the Penguins. ... Pittsburgh forward Gary Roberts did not dress for Game 1, having decided he was not ready to return from a groin injury sustained in the first round. ... The Penguins handed out white T-shirts at the door to each fan to wear.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: 3-Goal Lead Vanishes In All the Excitement. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Game 1 of their second-round playoff series against Pittsburgh was electrifying in the way the Rangers did not want it to be — a frenetic offensive show.