Kyle Dubas has said time and time again that the Penguins will not be in a situation where they find themselves at the bottom of the league, loading up top prospects from the first few selections of the draft as long as this core is still around.

That notion doesn't come so much from an unwillingness to bottom-out. It's that they can't. They cannot bottom-out as long as the core -- chiefly, Sidney Crosby -- is still around.

"When you have players like that," Dubas said last February, "They prevent you from getting (to the bottom of the league). They're too good."

The Penguins' 3-2 overtime win over the Golden Knights on Tuesday at PPG Paints Arena was a prime example of that.

The Golden Knights are one of the league's best this season, ranked fourth overall. They're hot, too, coming into Pittsburgh 7-2 in their last nine games, including a 4-0 win over the Penguins only four days ago in Las Vegas.

Vegas is one of the league's stingiest teams defensively, too, with their 26.3 shots against average ranking third-best in the league. That was very much on display here, with the Golden Knights conceding just 17 shots.

Crosby had nearly a quarter of those chances alone, leading the way with four. And he made sure his counted

The Penguins carried a 1-0 lead into the first intermission, despite being outshot 9-4 in the first 20 minutes. Crosby had the period's only goal, parking himself in front of the crease on a power play and redirecting a pass from Rickard Rakell past Ilya Samsonov:

Just three minutes into the second period, he doubled the lead. Crosby won a faceoff, and tried banking the puck off the boards to Rakell. Rakell dove to recover the puck and get it back to Crosby, and Crosby just took it to the net and snapped the puck five-hole:

Pavel Dorofeyev got the Golden Knights on the board late in the second period, and then Noah Hanifin tied the game with six seconds remaining in regulation to force overtime.

Overtime lasted all of 49 seconds. Kris Letang broke the puck out of the Penguins' end and dropped it back to Evgeni Malkin in the neutral zone. Malkin held onto the puck long enough to draw all three Golden Knights -- Jack Eichel, Alex Pietrangelo and Dorofeyev -- to him. That left Erik Karlsson wide-open as he hopped off the bench, allowing Malkin to drop it back to him to set up the game-winner:

A lot of hands went into this one. Karlsson, obviously, for the game-winner, and Malkin and Letang for their efforts setting it up. Tristan Jarry again was excellent, stopping 35 of 37 shots, including 18 of 19 in the third period alone as the Golden Knights were desperately pushing. Rakell had two sharp primary assists in regulation.

But without Crosby, this game never gets close to overtime. The way the Penguins were stifled by the Golden Knights for much of the game could have been demoralizing. But for most of the game, the Penguins had the upper hand because of their captain.

It's probably not going to be enough to make the playoffs -- the Penguins are just too far out of it. But Crosby can still have a game like this, where he can seemingly will his team into the fight and drag everyone along with him. It's a scene Bryan Rust is all too familiar with seeing.

"Despite what's going on, despite the moves we made, despite where we are in the standings, we have guys in this room who know what the Pittsburgh Penguins standard is," Rust told me. "I think he's the epitome of that."

Rust said that all of the leaders in the room -- but Crosby especially -- try to lead by example and let it be known that the players still have a job to do for the rest of the season, no matter how far out of the race they may be,

 "We still have expectations, and we have standards that we need to continue to meet," Rust continued. "That includes work ethic, the way we play, how we play, details, still trying to win games. He just leads by example every single night. It was apparent here tonight."

Apparent, it was. 

Dubas said on last week's trade deadline day that it's time to "shift to the execution" of the retooling stage after spending 12 months accumulating picks and prospects, and "return the team to contention as urgently as possible."

That'll, of course, require work on Dubas' end in building out the roster. As the next wave of young players arrives, Crosby will be here to help to continue to establish a culture, that "Pittsburgh Penguins standard." And when they do get back to being contenders, it'll still be Crosby at the forefront.