Good Sunday morning!

• Blake Lizotte had just exited the Pittsburgh zone when, for reasons that the Lizotte we've watched all winter long could never explain, he executed a willful drop pass to ... the other guys.

Might've picked up a primary assist in the process, too:

Ow.

Missing Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, that's one thing. But missing all the pluses of being able to boast of the NHL's most formidable fourth line in Lizotte, Noel Acciari and Connor Dewar ... my goodness, that's plainly been more than they could bear.

"The last handful of games, we haven't really played up to our standard," Lizotte would tell me late Saturday night here at the Delta Center. "We take a lot of pride -- and we have all year -- in the way we play. It's a long year, and there hasn't really been a stretch like this for our line."

I interrupted to emphatically agree. They'd conceded eight whole goals at even-strength through the first 64 games. The one above was the fourth in the past two games alone.

"That type of stuff happens," he'd proceed. "No player's ever played a perfect 82 games. No line's ever been perfect, either. So I think the important thing was to stay with it, to move past it. And tonight, giving up that first one, that kicked us into gear a little bit."

Not a little bit: Penguins 4, Mammoth 3

And this after Utah's Dylan Guenther scored not only the one above but also another in that opening period -- with an infuriatingly obvious kick, no less -- for a 2-0 lead at the initial intermission.

Anthony Mantha and Tommy Novak tied it in the second, Bryan Rust brought the first lead early in the third and, after old friend Ian Cole tied it for the Mammoth less than three minutes later, it'd be Acciari delivering the dagger with 11:57 to go:

Talk about trademark, huh? Lizotte and Acciari dig the puck out from the end boards back to Erik Karlsson, the latter's bought some bonus space by a well-timed pick from Dewar, Parker Wotherspoon sees all three of 'em crashing and ... bang.

Quite the celebration, too.

Not an accident.

"We wanted that one," Lizotte would tell me. "We feel like we earned it, with the way we responded."

"We got in on the forecheck, we were able to get it up to the D, they go D-to-D, me and Lizzo and Dewy are all going to the net, and the puck came to the net," Acciari recalled. "I just needed to make sure I was stronger than the guy next to me."

He usually is.

Heck, the whole line's usually stronger than their given matchup. Which, to be blunt, was what's made most of the past week feel like some Bizarro World mutation relative to these three. And when piled upon Sid's continued absence, the fifth and final game of Geno's suspension, and pretty much the entirety of the Eastern Conference surging around these Penguins, it felt borderline unfair.

But also, as Lizotte pointed out, inevitable to a degree.

“They were out there for one early on but, after that, I thought they responded," Dan Muse would say. "They've been awesome for us. You’ve gone 65 now, and today 66 games where there's gonna be … I’m surprised it took this long. There's going to be an off night, everybody has an off night, the best players in hockey, the best lines in hockey. And they've just stuck to their own identity for so long. Last game, they weren’t happy with it. They had an off night. They're out there for one tonight, and then they responded."

With more than just Acciari's winner, I should stress. All three partook in two clean penalty-kills after Guenther's kick, and all three were prominent in the final two minutes and the Mammoth playing with the extra attacker.

"They played a huge role," Muse continued. "It's a huge night for those guys, and it's a great response by them, and it comes as zero surprise that they would come out tonight and find a way to make an impact like that.”

Yeah, and well-timed, too. The Hurricanes, Islanders and Blue Jackets all prevailed on this day, the latter two making the Metro mashup that much tighter for the three total Stanley Cup playoff spots available out of the division:

NHL

I know, right?

"I think this was a must-win for us, a little bit," Karlsson would tell me. "Especially on a long trip like this. Now, hopefully, we go into Colorado with a little momentum, feeling good about ourselves."

Fair point. That's now 1-1-1 on this five-game, eight-day trip that'll finish in Denver and Raleigh, N.C., against first-place opponents in the Avalanche and Hurricanes. Lose this one and ... yeah.

"Massive," Stuart Skinner would call it.

"Huge," Rust would call it.

“The points are so important right now," Muse would say. "Coming off a game that you don't like, you always want to bounce back. It shows a lot with the group, too. We're down early, and just the way that they stuck with it and just continued to build our game, even at the end. Right now, it's about finding a way to get the points, and they did that tonight.”

Through a blissfully familiar formula.

GETTY

Erik Karlsson blows by the Mammoth's Alexander Kerfoot in the first period Saturday in Salt Lake City.

• It didn't result in anything significant, but the above photo captures Karlsson flying through center ice at a pace -- 23.75 mph, per NHL Edge -- that was wild to see. It was as if he were flying a foot off the ice.

The only person in the building unimpressed, I'm guessing, as the man himself.

"What is that, 23.75?" Karlsson would ask me. "Is that fast?"

Put it this way: When the Sabres' Beck Malenstyn, a fourth-line winger, achieved a burst of 24.94 mph two nights ago, he set a record since the league began tracking for the 2021-22 season.

Or this way: It was Karlsson's fastest burst of the season, it was in the 99th percentile of all bursts anywhere all season, and the dude scarcely appears human anymore.

• These are the Penguins' five fastest bursts of the season, for anyone curious:

NHL EDGE

As a team, they rank 11th in the NHL. Not exactly old and slow anymore.

• It's nuts that this could be a footnote, but Karlsson's two assists her both tied and overtook Bobby Orr with his 916th point, 12th on the all-time list for defensemen.

I happened to be the one to inform him:

• It's one thing to lean on Karlsson on the power, particularly in the absence of Sid/Geno, but it's quite another to force-feed the puck up top. So when Mantha converted on a five-on-three in the second period for the Penguins' first goal, it was noteworthy that, for once of late, the play was pushed low.

"We were struggling before that," Novak would say. "Obviously, they've only got three guys out there so, if they get a couple guys stuck up high, the low plays are there."

Exactly. And opponents have keyed on Karlsson up high.

• Mantha's 25th goal tied a career high, set in 2018-19 with the Red Wings. Maybe equally applause-worthy, if a lot less appreciated, his plus-15 rating leads the team's forwards.

• Ville Koivunen keeps getting rag-dolled off the puck, and he's yet to score in five games since his latest recall, but stick-taps to the kid for this: He's invariably among the team's possession leaders after each game. That's a testament to his defensive diligence, and that's also why Muse has him on the ice late in close games. Happened again here.

• Man, Ilya Solovyov was terrific again. Three superlative defensive plays in his end. It's a shame it took Sam Girard's injury to get him inserted again, but there's just no way management's not seeing this.

• Has it been four weeks yet?

Don't bite my head off here. Just looking at the calendar and seeing that Sid was hurt Feb. 18 at the Olympics in Milan, the game in Denver will be March 17, and that'll be one day short of the precise four-week mark.

"They're letting Geno out of jail" in Denver, as Karlsson told me with a grin, and it'd be quite a thing if both could return to face the NHL's No. 1 team.

• Thanks for reading my hockey coverage. Two games to go on this trip. Taylor Haase and I have the whole thing, and we're grateful to have you along.