One could hear a pin drop in the Penguins' locker room after Monday night's 2-1 loss to the Sharks.

Players were dead silent as they slowly removed their gear. None of the usual quiet chatter that occurs after a loss as players discuss moments from the game amongst themselves. Some just sat and processed, with Bryan Rust sitting in his locker with his gear on, staring straight ahead until most of his teammates had already left the room.

The Sharks were at the bottom of the league's standings coming into this game. They had lost nine of their last 10 games, and 17 of their last 20. They're rebuilding, and well on their way to having great odds for the No. 1 pick this summer. They're a bad team. 

Players and coaches will always dismiss the idea of a team being an easy win, citing the parity in the league. Anyone could beat anyone on a given night. And if this was a hard-fought, good effort by the Penguins but they just didn't have some bounces go their way, or they ran into a hot goaltender, the loss might not have stung as much as it did.

But there aren't any excuses -- the Penguins were just flat. The frustration in the Penguins' locker room comes from knowing that they've become their own worst enemy as of late.

"It sucks," Cody Glass told me after this one. "I mean, we do it to ourselves. It's not anything they're doing, just simple mistakes that we're making. We're playing good for moments in time and then one little thing changes the tide, and it goes the other way. It sucks."

Both teams played a scoreless first period. It wasn't good hockey. It was sloppy, the kind of game that might end up with something like a 7-6 final if either team could finish.

Former Penguin Mikael Granlund opened the scoring 7:41 into the second period, and it came because the Penguins shot themselves in the foot. Kevin Hayes won a defensive zone faceoff back to Ryan Shea, who promptly executed a tape-to-tape pass to the Sharks' Will Smith, who found Granlund with a cross-ice pass for the assist.

The Sharks were the better team in the second period, outshooting the Penguins 13-6. Even after that goal, there was little pushback from the Penguins.

Sidney Crosby tied the game 24 seconds into the third period with a backhand shot from a tough angle that Sharks goaltendr Yaroslav Askarov got a piece of but let trickle through his pads. The tie didn't even last four minutes, with Macklin Celebrini scoring the go-ahead goal in a way much like the Sharks' first goal. Crosby won a defensive zone faceoff back to Kris Letang, Letang passed the puck to Marcus Pettersson, who took the puck behind the net and turned it over to Tyler Toffoli. Toffoli got it over to Celebrini, and it's in the back of the net.

The Penguins pushed in the third, outshooting the Sharks 14-6. They finished the game with a 30-28 edge in shots. They were getting chances, but couldn't finish them against the league's weakest defensive team. 

"We hit a couple posts and I thought we had some great opportunities," Crosby said. "It hasn't been going in for us, and if one or two go in, it's a different game." 

The Penguins are shooting themselves in the foot with the mistakes and turnovers, and they can't score. They did have opportunities and chances in this one, but the issue is beyond this one game. They're now 2-4 to open this long road trip, and in those four loses they've scored just one goal in each loss.

"It sucks," Glass echoed once again. "We want to create more offense. We all are offensive players, and then we're not scoring. It's brutal. We have, like, what, three goals in our last three games? It's sucks. We don't want it. We've got to change it."

Players knew the significance of this road trip. It's a pivotal stretch of the season. With so many teams tight in contention for the wild card spot, it could really make or break the season. The 2-4 start, coupled with points picked up by those teams in contention, has turned the Penguins from a team on the cusp of a wild card spot to one just as close to being at the bottom of the conference than they are to a playoff position, with more games played than any of those teams they're fighting with. 

Alex Nedeljkovic said that "there has to be" more urgency given the Penguins' situation.

"I've said it before, anybody can beat anybody in this league," he said. "It's not like we're in a position where we're sitting at the top looking down at everybody thinking, 'Oh, we're going to get this team's best tonight.' We're always going to get their best. We can't bank on having an easy game from the other side. We have to work for what we want to get. And when we do, it's a great game. It's fun to watch. It's fun to play behind. It's fun for the guys to play. So, we've just got to find a way to have that urgency all the time and we need to find it quick." 

It's easy to look at the results or flat games like this one and assume that the team has quit. But then you see third-period pushes like this one that fell short, or how hard they take these losses afterward, and it's clear that nobody's quitting. They're just not good enough. And when they do play well enough to maybe win a game, their own mistakes do them in.

Even so, players are hopeful that they can get themselves out of it.

"We've just got to take one game at a time, stay positive," Glass told me. "You know, it's easy for negativity to creep in, especially when adversity is hitting you right in the face. You have to stay positive. You've got to stay as a group. We're doing some good things, even though it might not seem like it. It's like we're right there and then we're doing it to ourselves."

It's not out of the question that the Penguins can figure things out, and play more consistently. Play like they did in Los Angeles on this very trip. But with the hole they've managed to dig themselves into already, it might not be enough.