It began with a 3-1 loss to Buffalo at PPG Paints Arena Oct. 3, 60 minutes of hockey that spanned the gamut from awful to abysmal.
It ended with a 3-0 loss in Philadelphia Tuesday, when the Penguins were flatter than a shadow for three periods, reminding everyone what they can look like when stripped of all energy and emotion.
But between those putrid bookends, the first 50 games of 2019-20 produced some of the most inspired -- and inspiring -- regular-season hockey in franchise history. It's not just the Penguins' 31-14-5 record, which projects to 110 points over a full season, that has so impressed. It's all that they had to overcome -- mostly, frequent and significant injuries to key players -- to get there.
Only five skaters, including all three members of the Zach Aston-Reese-Teddy Blueger-Brandon Tanev line, dressed for every game so far. Sidney Crosby (28 games missed), Brian Dumoulin (27), Evgeni Malkin (13), Bryan Rust (14), Jake Guentzel (11), Kris Letang (8) and Patric Hornqvist (17) all were out for extended stretches.
That kind of adversity could crush a team, but seemed to fuel this one.
Though the 32 games that remain will determine just how successful this season ultimately will be, the Penguins have gotten to where they are -- fourth in the overall standings -- largely because of a level of commitment and selflessness rarely associated with this franchise.
If they come out of the all-star break and bye week with those intangibles intact -- and are able to have something close to their lineup of choice healthy for more than a few minutes -- they have the potential to be playing long after the regular season has expired.
Here's a look at how the first 3 1/2 months of their 2019-20 season have played out:
FORWARDS
Crosby was playing some of the best two-way hockey of his career when he was sidelined in mid-November by surgery to repair a sports hernia, and there's no reason to doubt that he will get his game back to that rarefied level after the break. But for a change, Crosby might not be the most compelling figure on this team.
How about Malkin who, after a relatively lackluster showing in 2018-19, has just about returned to force-of-nature status, including a newly developed knack for winning faceoffs? Or Guentzel, who had 20 goals in 39 games before suffering the shoulder injury that figures to keep him out of action until sometime during the playoffs, if not next fall?
Then there's Rust who, with 21 goals in 36 games, actually is scoring at a faster pace than Guentzel was and already has had a career year. And Hornqvist, who a year ago looked like all those winters of taking more abuse than a crash-test dummy had reduced him to a shell of himself, but who has been rejuvenated.
The Penguins figured going into the season that they had the makings of two pretty effective offensive lines, but probably didn't expect that Aston-Reese-Blueger-Tanev would grow to be one of the league's better blue-collar units. Which it is.
There is, of course, still room for improvement up front. Dominik Kahun, sidelined with a concussion, needs to add consistency to his offensive game. So does Dominik Simon, although he's finally shown a bit of a scoring touch lately.
Alex Galchenyuk has been one of the rare underachievers on this team, putting up just five goals in 41 games and rarely having a significant impact. Barring a radical turnaround in his performance, the Penguins will have no reason to try to re-sign him after this season.
DEFENSEMEN
Letang can be a polarizing figure, playing at Norris Trophy-caliber levels at some times and making ghastly errors in judgment or execution at others, but he remains the cornerstone of a unit that has, in general, been solid despite frequent changes to personnel and pairings.
Dumoulin provides the perfect complement to Letang because his defensive prowess allows Letang to fully indulge his offensive instincts, but he's been limited to 23 games because of ankle surgery. Jack Johnson has been working alongside Letang in recent weeks and has had a strong showing after getting off to a miserable start last season.
Marcus Pettersson fits in nicely on a second pairing and John Marino, his partner of late, has been a revelation since the earliest hours of training camp. Apparently no one has bothered mentioning to Marino that young defensemen are supposed to struggle while adjusting to the pro game, because he has performed with uncommon poise and been effective in every role he has been given.
Justin Schultz, who has missed the past 16 games because of injury, should rejoin the lineup after this lull in the schedule and his offensive talents will add a dimension to the defense corps. Nonetheless, Marino's development will make it possible for Jim Rutherford to allow Schultz to leave via unrestricted free agency this summer if meeting his contract demands would place too much of a strain on the franchise's salary-cap structure.
When the story of this season is told, the contributions from members of the supporting cast like Chad Ruhwedel and Juuso Riikola should not be overlooked. Their solid play when injuries forced them into upgraded roles has been invaluable.
GOALTENDERS
Rutherford made no secret of his willingness to listen to trade proposals for Tristan Jarry last off-season, but never got an offer he deemed worthy of accepting. A lot of his peers probably wish they'd been a bit more generous, because Jarry needed less than a half-season to establish himself as one of the league's best young goalies.
After Matt Murray's game slipped out of synch earlier this season, Jarry gradually wrestled the No. 1 job away from him. Murray has taken major strides toward regaining his customary form during his past few starts, but Jarry has not faltered, which is part of the reason he'll spend part of this break at the All-Star Game instead of a beach somewhere.
If Murray and Jarry continue to perform capably, there likely will be a more even split of playing time -- it has skewed heavily toward Jarry for most of the past couple months -- and Rutherford might be faced with having to choose which he sees as the franchise's goalie of the future, since both will be restricted free agents after this season and figure to be in line for significant raises.
POWER PLAY
This should, on paper, be one of the most imposing and productive facets of the Penguins' game. Give them an extra man, a little extra space and a No. 1 unit built around the likes of Crosby, Malkin and Letang and the goals should come in bunches.
Hasn't happened.
Not nearly as often as it should, anyway.
The Penguins are scoring on just 19.6 percent of their chances with the man-advantage, a decidedly middle-of-the-pack number.
They failed to get a single power-play goal in 11 games between Oct. 16 and Nov. 9 and have scored more than one in a game only seven times.
With the people they can send out when the other team is penalized -- even with Guentzel or Schultz or anyone else unavailable -- the Penguins should be scoring on at least 25 percent of their opportunities.
Improving their power-play efficiency -- putting more of an emphasis on simply getting more pucks and bodies to the net would be a good start -- could be a real difference-maker during the stretch drive.
PENALTY KILL
The Penguins are a little better than average while shorthanded -- they've killed 82.1 percent of the power plays they've faced -- and this unit actually seems like it's been performing better than its ranking suggests.
It has given up more than one goal only four times, none of those in the past 14 games.
Johnson has been a particularly formidable defender -- he's a pretty good bet to be on the ice anytime the Penguins are down two men -- and Blueger and Tanev generally are the first set of forwards dispatched when a penalty has been assessed, while Rust and Aston-Reese work well as the No. 2 tandem.
Killing penalties well requires a lot of the same qualities the Penguins have shown in general this season, so it stands to reason that it's something they would do well.
COACHING
There are plenty of good coaches in the NHL, and a lot of them are doing good work this season.
Then there is Mike Sullivan.
He's been running their bench for more than four years now, and precedent suggests that his players should have begun tuning him out quite a while ago.
It's been quite the opposite, actually.
Even though the Penguins have had their lineup of choice intact for less than one game -- they started the Nov. 2 game against Edmonton with it, but Hornqvist was injured that afternoon -- Sullivan and his staff have gotten the buy-in from players that was needed to patch every gaping hole that has appeared in their lineup.
That obviously speaks well of the players, but it says a lot about Sullivan that he still could shepherd this group through all the challenges it has faced in 2019-20 at a time when the typical coach's shelf life in this league is about to expire. If it hadn't already.
If the Penguins don't stumble down the stretch, Sullivan will deserve as much credit -- and maybe more -- for what they achieve as anyone who has pulled on a sweater for one of these first 50 games.