OK, so this wasn't the Penguins' most impressive performance of the season.
They've played better games -- a lot of them, frankly -- and done it against better opponents.
But when a team has lost six games in a row, its priority is to get standings points, not style points, and the bottom line on the Penguins' 7-3 victory against the Senators at PPG Paints Arena Tuesday night is pretty basic: A four-goal win is better than a five-alarm tire fire.
That's a charitable way to characterize their 0-3 swing through California last week, when they lost to the bottom three teams in the Western Conference in a span of four days.
Following that debacle, they switched time zones and conferences, lining up against what would be the worst team in the East if the Red Wings had been properly relegated to the AHL by now.
While the Penguins' three-game pratfall in Los Angeles, Anaheim and San Jose had underscored the reality that there are no gimme putts in today's NHL, a home game against the Senators might be as close as the Penguins come to one: They are 11-0-1 in their past 12 regular-season games with Ottawa at PPG Paints Arena.
It seemed pretty clear that streak would not be in jeopardy on this night when John Marino, back after missing 11 games while recovering from surgery to repair multiple fractures in his cheekbone, staked the Penguins to a 1-0 lead when he threw a wrist shot past Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson 48 seconds into the game ...
... and Conor Sheary made it 2-0 51 seconds later, as his pass to Sidney Crosby in front of the net hit Ottawa defenseman Mike Reilly and skidded into the net:
Just 99 seconds after the opening faceoff, the Penguins had matched their offensive output from the games in Anaheim and San Jose last weekend and owned their first lead since a 5-3 loss in Washington nine days earlier.
"We were able to score the first couple of goals," Marino said. "That's huge for us. Going forward, if we're able to do that, most of the time, we'll come out on top."
The primary assist on Sheary's goal went to Brian Dumoulin, who had missed the previous 37 games while recovering from surgery to repair lacerated tendons in his left ankle.
Marino's goal and Dumoulin's assist were the only points either of them got, but that hardly was the extent of their contributions, as their returns stabilized a defense corps that had been fraying, if not flat-out unraveling, in recent games. Getting those two back allowed Mike Sullivan to deploy his pairings of choice -- Dumoulin-Kris Letang, Marcus Pettersson-Marino and Jack Johnson-Justin Schultz -- for the first time since Dumoulin was injured Nov. 30 in St. Louis.
"They're such good players on both sides of the puck," Sullivan said. "They defend so well. Their puck-poise on the breakouts. They have a lot of subtleties to their games that help us get out of our end clean with the puck. They help us create some balance throughout our pairs. They help our penalty-kill. There are so many aspects of the game where they help us. It just makes us a better team when they're in the lineup."
The Penguins also are better when guys like Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are producing to their potential, and both had big nights against the Senators.
Crosby scored the game-winning goal and set up two others to become the 32nd player in NHL history to record 800 career assists, and just the sixth to do it in fewer than 1,000 games. (He needed 980.)
Malkin, meanwhile, had four assists, three of them on goals by linemate Bryan Rust, who picked up the third hat trick of his career and the Penguins' first this season.
Rust accounted for nearly half the Penguins' goals, as they scored seven for a league-high seventh time in 2019-20. It was, however, a rampage that couldn't have been anticipated from a team that had managed just eight goals during its six-game skid.
"When a team like this goes through that kind of a slump, eventually it's just going to break wide open," Matt Murray said. "We kind of figured that was going to happen at some point."
Murray stopped 23 of 26 shots, and benefited from some reasonably solid play in front of him for much of the game. Still, the Penguins' overall defense play did not reach the level it did earlier in the season, or where they hope to have it for the stretch drive and playoffs.
"We've got another level to our defense, becoming stingier moving forward," Sullivan said. "And we'll work on that."
That's not the only facet of their game where improvement is possible, if not imperative.
They won just 33 of 74 faceoffs, for example, and generated a meager total of four shots on five power plays.
While they seemed satisfied with how many pucks they threw Anderson's way during five-on-five play, they still frequently yield to the temptation to make an extra pass when they have a man-advantage rather than simply getting the puck on goal.
That's an issue that will have to be rectified if their power play is to become the difference-maker it could -- and should -- be during the balance of this season.
Still, scoring seven goals, regardless of the details or circumstances, has to salve the collective psyche of a group that got nothing but a little meal money out of its eight-day road trip that could have solidified their place atop the Metropolitan Division rather than depositing them behind the Capitals and Flyers.
"Everybody's feeling good after a game like that, for sure," Murray said. "We did everything we needed to do to get a win."
Which doesn't mean they did everything well enough to beat opponents more imposing than the Senators.
"It gives us something to build on," Sullivan said, adding that it was "the type of response game we were looking for."
At the very least, it allowed them to pull out of their free fall through the Metropolitan before they tumbled completely out of a guaranteed playoff berth.
While their postseason spot still is far from secure, beating the Senators reminded the Penguins that what transpired in California doesn't have to be a template for what remains of this season.
"We know what we're capable of when we play well," Pettersson said. "We know that we just have to play the right way, and it's going to come for us."
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