This was a game that never should have gotten to overtime, and the Penguins knew it.
That might explain why, once it got there, they looked as if they wanted nothing to do with it, which all but assured Tuesday evening would end with a 5-4 loss to the Islanders at PPG Paints Arena.
The only uncertainties were when it would happen, and which New York player would score the goal to make it official. Brock Nelson answered both of those at 2:55 of the extra period, putting an exclamation point on the Islanders' comeback from a two-goal deficit with less than 4 1/2 minutes remaining in regulation.
And leaving Mike Sullivan more than a little displeased with what he saw from his team once the game stretched beyond the third period.
"I didn't think we were very good at all," he said of overtime. "I thought our details were brutal. We have to be better. There aren't tons of strategy in overtime. There are only three people on the ice. You have to defend when it's called (for). You have to support the puck. You have to out-change a team, and we did none of the above.
"We struggled in the faceoff circle, as well. Overtime is a lot about possession, and when you lose the faceoffs, you're fighting for that possession constantly. It started there. We have to be better on faceoffs, but our attention to detail just wasn't there."
New York's victory extended its streak of games with at least one point to 15, tying its franchise record. The only blemish on that run was a 4-3 Penguins victory at Barclays Center Nov. 7, when they rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win on an overtime goal by Bryan Rust.
Rust played a part in the outcome of this one, too. Not so much for staking the Penguins to a 1-0 lead by beating Islanders goalie Semyon Varlamov during a power play at 11:34 of the opening period, but for being assessed a tripping minor at 13:37 of the third period, with the Penguins holding a 4-2 lead.
Although Rust and some teammates disputed the merits of the penalty, Sullivan went directly to the bottom line: "It's a tough time of the game to take a penalty," he said.
And Evgeni Malkin offered an equally pertinent thought.
"It doesn't matter if it was a bad or good call," he said. "We need to play better."
Rust's teammates actually managed to get through the two minutes when he was in the penalty box unscathed, but Josh Bailey lifted New York to within a goal four seconds after Rust stepped back onto the ice. And, in the process, set the tone for just about everything that followed.
"The third goal, I think, was the killer," Sullivan said.
Still, the Penguins managed to fend off New York until, with Varlamov replaced by an extra attacker, Ryan Pulock beat Matt Murray through traffic from the high slot with 92 seconds left in regulation to make it 4-4.
"If we could have gotten a line change, I think we would have been all right," Sullivan said.
Murray finished with 37 saves and, while his personal stats suffered a bit, he is one of the primary reasons the Penguins got a point out of this game.
"I thought he had a really good game," Sullivan said.
Brandon Tanev had a pretty fair one, too, scoring a pair of goals. So did Malkin, who had a pair of assists and threw a few passes that would have turned up on the team's highlights video if they'd led to goals.
But the Islanders have come by their 15-3-1 record honestly. They are deep and talented, opportunistic and tenacious. So even after Jake Guentzel scored on a power play at 2:39 of the third period to put the Penguins up, 4-2, the Islanders didn't relent.
"When we got up, 4-2, they turned it up a notch," Rust said. "And we didn't match it."
And when Rust's minor gave them an opening, the Islanders exploited it, even if the goal didn't come until the Penguins had returned to full strength.
"They kept coming," Murray said. "You have to give credit to them. That's a good team over there. They're on that (14-0-1) run for a reason. They kept coming ... and gave us all we could handle."
More they could handle, actually, as the Penguins never really regained their equilibrium after the Islanders' cut their lead to 4-3.
"They were coming at us hard," Brian Dumoulin said. "We just needed a couple of (offensive-)zone shifts to change the momentum a little bit. They did a good job of staying on us."
This was not a burn-the-video kind of defeat for the Penguins, who did a lot of things pretty well for much of the game. They just didn't do them quite long enough to get a second point to show for it.
"We played a good game, I think," Malkin said. "Except the last 10 minutes."
Including the overtime that never should have happened.
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