'Very resilient' Penguins earn another comeback victory taken in Uniondale, N.Y. (Penguins)

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Sidney Crosby scores the shootout-deciding goal

UNIONDALE, N.Y.  -- Make no mistake, this game played out precisely the way Mike Sullivan would have liked to draw it up.

Assuming his objective had been to assure that the Penguins would lose for the third consecutive game, anyway.

Failing to score a power-play goal for the seventh game in a row certainly would have been a good start.

The importance of giving up at least one man-advantage goal for the sixth consecutive game and the 10th time in 12 shouldn't be discounted, either.

Throw in a few other random realities, like Evgeni Malkin being a virtual non-factor for most of the evening and prized rookie defenseman P.O Joseph getting a scalding introduction to the talents of New York Islanders forward Mathew Barzal deep into the third priod, and the Penguins appeared to have hit upon an ideal formula for failure.

It was, then, no surprise that they never led for even a second at Nassau Coliseum Thursday night.

Not during regulation, when New York went in front no fewer than three times.

Not in overtime, when neither team was able to score.

Not until the scoreboard clock was turned off for a shootout, when Sidney Crosby scored and Casey DeSmith rejected all three Islanders shots that he faced to give the Penguins (6-5-1) a 4-3 victory and a couple of points to take with them on the flight home.

Consider that outcome the latest bit of evidence that while this team has some real issues -- it's tough to win in this league when your special teams are awful and some of your best players don't often look the part -- no one should question its ability to overcome adversity.

Never mind that the Penguins manufacture so much of it for themselves.

"It takes a certain level of resilience," Sullivan said. "It takes a certain level of mental toughness, and a belief in the group that we can come back. These guys, they don't get discouraged. ... I think they have a belief in themselves that they can come back, regardless of what the circumstances look like.

"We prefer not to chase games, but early in this part of the season, we've chased a fair amount of them."

And while they've caught enough of those games to wring 13 points out of them, losing a third consecutive game could have put a few significant dents in their psyches.

"I think we needed a win for our confidence," Sullivan said.

That Crosby would get the shootout-deciding goal was predictable enough -- after all, he has 18 of them in his career -- but few probably anticipated that Malkin would be the guy who forced overtime by scoring with 18 seconds to go in regulation.

That's mostly because the shot he hammered past Islanders goalie Semyon Varlamov from above the right circle was Malkin's first of the game, much of which he had spent passing on chances to put pucks on goal.

Malkin's availability for the game had been uncertain after he left practice Wednesday because of an eye issue, and there were times when Sullivan probably wished he'd given Malkin's spot in the lineup to, say, a random optometrist.

But just when it looked as if the goal Barzal scored at 13:35 of the third by deking past Joseph to give New York a 3-2 lead would go down as the game-winner, Malkin took a feed from Kris Letang and pounded the puck by Varlamov after DeSmith had been replaced by an extra attacker.

"He has a great shot," Letang said. "That's what he does well -- shoot the puck."

True enough, but Malkin hasn't done it very often this season. He is averaging two shots per game in 2020-21, down from 3.11 last season.

That stat aside, given the circumstances, his goal had to be a sight for sore eyes.

And even the ones that weren't sore anymore.

"We've worked on that six-on-five a fair amount," Sullivan said. "We had traffic in front (of Varlamov). I think that was a big part of it. We made the goalie's sight lines difficult. (Letang) makes a good pass. He puts it right in (Malkin's) wheelhouse and obviously, he can really shoot the puck."

While convincing Malkin to do that more often figures to be a priority for Sullivan and his staff, getting their special teams in order should be an even more pressing concern.

The power play has been wretched of late, especially when the No. 1 unit is on the ice, and the penalty-kill is no less troubling because it was expected to be a real strength this season.

Instead, it has a success rate of just 70.3 percent, the fourth-lowest figure in the league. The latest blow to it came at 16:40 of the opening period, when Cody Ceci was serving a delay-of-game minor and New York's Jean-Gabriel Pageau deflected a Nick Leddy shot out of the air and past DeSmith for a 2-1 lead.

"We're just maybe a little bit disconnected in some situations," Bryan Rust said. "We seem to do a fairly decent job for a lot of penalty-kills, then there's one or two big breakdowns that always end up in the back of our net."

Eliminating those lapses when they're down a man presumably will get a lot of attention in coming days.

"There's a number of things that I think are causes for some of the problems that we've had on the penalty-kill," Sullivan said. "We're trying to sort through those things right now. But obviously, we need to be better there."

Actually, their body of work so far suggests the Penguins need to do whatever is necessary to extend a game beyond the third period, because five of their six victories have come in overtimes or shootouts.

On this night, getting to the shootout was one thing, getting through it, quite another.

It certainly couldn't have been as easy as DeSmith made it look, as he turned aside shots by Jordan Eberle, Barzal and Josh Bailey.

"He was really good in that shootout, obviously," Sullivan said.

DeSmith seemed to be ready for everything New York threw at him during the shootout, which is pretty good for a guy who doesn't study the tendencies of shooters he might face in such situations.

"I don't do much pre-scout on shootouts," he said. "I kind of like going in having nothing on my mind, in that regard. I know certain guys -- what they're good at, when their tendencies are -- but I don't exactly study certain moves."

Sullivan praised DeSmith's competitive instincts, saying that "he just battles," and the same applies to pretty much his entire team.

Playing from behind as often as the Penguins have had to this season is a low-percentage approach to succeeding in this game, but they've made the numbers work with surprising regularity during the first month of 2020-21.

"We have a really high-character group in there," Rust said. "It's a very resilient group."

• Letang, on the Penguins' latest unproductive power play: "I don't think we attacked enough." They got their only chance with the extra man when Eberle was caught using a broken stick at 8:43 of the second period.

• The Penguins are 3-0 in shootouts this season, and have won their past seven.

• Islanders winger Cal Clutterbuck appeared to be badly injured after getting tangled up with Chad Ruhwedel behind the Penguins' goal line with 6 1/2 minutes left in the second period, but was back for the start of the third.

• The Penguins had a miserable night on faceoffs, going 25-32, but their numbers would have been a lot worse if Crosby hadn't won 15 of the 24 he handled.

• A couple of hours before the game, the Penguins put forward Jared McCann, who was injured against the Islanders last Saturday, on injured-reserve and recalled Frederick Gaudreau from their taxi squad. Gaudreau did not play Thursday.

THE ESSENTIALS

Boxscore
 Scoreboard
Standings
Statistics
Highlights

THE THREE STARS

As selected at Nassau Coliseum:

1. Bryan Rust, Penguins
2. Evgeni Malkin, Penguins
3. Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Islanders

THE INJURIES

Zach Trotman underwent right knee surgery Jan. 14 and is expected to miss 4-6 weeks

Marcus Pettersson has an unspecified injury and has resumed practicing after being listed as "week to week."

Juuso Riikola is out "longer term" with an unspecified injury.

Evan Rodrigues is out "longer term" with an unspecified injury.

Brian Dumoulin has an unspecified lower-body injury.

Jared McCann is "week to week" with an unspecified lower-body injury.

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

Jake Guentzel-Sidney Crosby-Bryan Rust
Jason Zucker-Evgeni Malkin-Kasperi Kapanen
Zach Aston-Reese-Teddy Blueger-Brandon Tanev
Drew O'Connor-Mark Jankowski-Colton Sceviour

P.O Joseph-Kris Letang
Mike Matheson-John Marino

Chad Ruhwedel-Cody Ceci

And for Barry Trotz's Islanders:

Anders Lee-Mat Barzal-Josh Bailey
Michael Dal Colle-Brock Nelson-Jordan Eberle
Leo Komarov-Jean-Gabriel Pageau-Oliver Wahlstrom
Matt Martin-Casey Cizikas-Cal Clutterbuck

Adam Pelech-Ryan Pulock
Nick Leddy-Scott Mayfield
Andy Greene-Noah Dobson 

THE SCHEDULE

The Penguins are scheduled to have a day off Friday. They are supposed to practice Saturday morning in Cranberry before facing Washington Sunday at 3:08 p.m. at PPG Paints Arena.

THE CONTENT

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