CALGARY, Alberta -- This was the Penguins' 20th victory of the season, and there really wasn't anything very special about it.
If you get past the part about their goalie stopping 33 of 34 shots, including one during a 2-on-0 break.
And the part about losing a top-four defenseman on his first shift of the evening.
And, of course, the part about the two guys who had been so sick that there was no guarantee that either would play, let alone that both would score.
And how one of those goals was a major career milestone.
So, yeah, nothing about their 4-1 win over the Flames was all that far out of the ordinary. Not for these Penguins, anyway. Not in this most improbable, often exhilarating, season.
Oh sure, some teams might view being overwhelmed in every facet of the game during the first 20 minutes of play as a problem. Same with having to get through almost an entire game with just five defensemen, especially when one-half of the top pairing already was missing because of an injury.
Tough times? Maybe. But they seem to have found the secret to an on-ice alchemy that allows them to regularly transform leaden adversity into 24-karat points.
Never mind that through most of the first period, Calgary made them look like a group that had just been introduced to the sport a few hours earlier. And that Justin Schultz hadn't even gotten an opportunity to begin taxing his sweat glands when he appeared to injure his right knee or leg in a neutral-zone collision with the Flames' Mikael Backlund and spent the rest of the evening in street clothes:
This is a team that doesn't simply survive tough times; it feasts on them.
Good thing, too, because the Penguins have had a steady diet of those since the earliest days of this season.
Tristan Jarry's goaltending has played a leading role in overcoming many of those challenges, self-inflicted and otherwise, and so it was on this night. And while his most memorable save came when he denied Milan Lucic during that 2-on-0 break during the second period, it was his 16 stops during the opening period that prevented Calgary from squeezing all the suspense out of this game before the first intermission.
"Quite honestly, it might have been our worst period of the year," Mike Sullivan said.
And he might have been understating it.
But is also means that what followed might have been their best response. One of them, at the very least.
"Coming back in the room and resetting was a big thing for us," Jarry said. "Mike came in and told us just to calm down a little bit and play our game."
Which they did, at a level the Flames couldn't match.
John Marino tied the game at 12:13 of the second, and Bryan Rust -- whose participation had been far from certain because of a flu-like ailment -- got what proved to be the game-winner 82 seconds later, beating Calgary goalie Cam Talbot from inside the left circle:
That was the last goal either team scored until Evgeni Malkin -- who, like Rust, had been questionable for the game because of illness -- hit an empty net at 18:02 of the third for his 400th in the NHL:
"It's a huge number," Malkin said. "But I want more, for sure."
He'll have a chance for No. 401 when the Penguins visit Edmonton Friday at 9:08 p.m. What the defense corps playing behind him that night will look like remains to be seen, because Sullivan said after the game that Schultz's injury still was being evaluated.
There was not, however, much time needed to assess the impact of having to play virtually the entire game without Schultz.
"It's tough when you lose a defenseman on his first shift of the game," Sullivan said. "You have to go to five right away. Those guys were playing heavy minutes."
Their workloads ranged from Chad Ruhwedel's 16:31 to Kris Letang's 27:54.
Losing Schultz was a significant blow to a unit that's already without Brian Dumoulin, but this was not the only time the Penguins have lost a defenseman during a game this season, and they generally handle the departure well.
"Sometimes, it brings the best out of people, when they're in a situation like this," Letang said. "You have to raise your game."
You have to do something special.
Which the Penguins have made into something pretty routine this season.
• Although the Penguins failed to convert on any of their three power plays, their second one played a major role in Marino's goal. He scored five seconds after Calgary returned to full strength, but the Flames' penalty-killers had been unable to get off the ice and appeared to be operating on fumes when Marino scored.
• Sullivan, on Malkin scoring No. 400 into an empty net: "I don't care how you get it. Four hundred goals is an awful lot of goals in this league."
• Malkin became the fourth player in franchise history to score 400, joining Mario Lemieux (690), Sidney Crosby (451) and Jaromir Jagr (439)., as well as the seventh Russian in NHL history:
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE• With Schultz removed from the mix, Jared McCann filled in on the point opposite Letang on the No. 1 power play unit.
• Letang, on Calgary's dominant first period: "They're in their building. They have the crowd on their side. They didn't travel. We're coming into a building where they'd been having success lately. They came hard at us. They put us back on our heels, and we were puck-watching, reacting instead of finishing."
• Jake Guentzel was held without a point for the first time in six games.
• Marino's goal was his fourth; Letang, whose empty-netter at 18:22 was his eighth, is the only Penguins defenseman with more. "(Marino) has always shown an ability to have poise with the puck," Sullivan said. "He helps us get out of our end. He doesn't throw it away. He protects it extremely well. He can make plays under pressure. Now he's doing it in the offensive zone, as well."
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THE INJURIES
• Nick Bjugstad (core muscle surgery)
• Sidney Crosby (sports hernia surgery)
• Brian Dumoulin (ankle surgery)
• Patric Hornqvist (unspecified lower-body)
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Jake Guentzel -- Evgeni Malkin -- Bryan Rust
Zach Aston-Reese -- Jared McCann -- Dominik Kahun
Alex Galchenyuk -- Teddy Blueger -- Brandon Tanev
Dominik Simon -- Joseph Blandisi -- Sam Lafferty
John Marino -- Kris Letang
Jack Johnson -- Justin Schultz
Marcus Pettersson -- Chad Ruhwedel
And for Geoff Ward's Flames:
Matthew Tkachuk -- Elias Lindholm -- Andrew Mangiapane
Johnny Gaudreau -- Sean Monahan -- Mikael Backlund
Milan Lucic -- Derek Ryan -- Dillon Dube
Sam Bennett -- Tobias Rieder -- Michael Frolik
Mark Giordano -- T.J. Brodie
Noah Hanifan -- Travis Hamonic
Oliver Kylington -- Rasmus Anderson
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins are scheduled to practice Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern in Calgary at the Stampede Corral. They will travel to Edmonton and practice there Thursday afternoon before facing the Oilers Friday at 9:08 p.m.
THE COVERAGE
Visit our team page for everything.
