TAMPA, Fla. _ The Penguins have won five games in a row, their best run of 2016-17.
They have 54 games remaining in the regular season. Win, oh, 52 or so of those, and they just might claim one of the top three spots in the Metropolitan Division playoff field.
They preserved their winning streak with a 4-3 victory against Tampa Bay at Amalie Arena Saturday, rallying from yet another multiple-goal deficit.
The key to the comeback was their previously dormant power play, which scored on three consecutive tries in the final two periods.
The Penguins (18-7-3) moved back into a tie with the New York Rangers for first place in the division, but don't have much of a cushion over much of the Metropolitan.
Philadelphia has won eight games in a row. Columbus has a six-game winning streak after beating the New York Islanders, who had been on a 5-0-1 roll. Washington takes a three-game run of victories into its game against Vancouver Sunday.
The Penguins probably were afraid they might lose more than two points when, 12{ minutes into the game, Lightning defenseman Luke Witkowski knocked Sidney Crosby face-first into the boards.
Crosby was down for a short time, then skated slowly to the bench and headed directly to the locker room.
He did not return until the start of the second period.
Crosby had given the Penguins a 1-0 lead at 12:03 of the opening period, when he lunged to sweep a Brian Dumoulin rebound past Lightning goal Andrei Vasilevskiy.
The goal extended his scoring streak to a season-high seven games and earned assists for Dumoulin and Kris Letang.
Vasilevskiy kept his team within a goal by denying Evgeni Malkin from the front lip of the crease at 13:44, and Malkin picked up a double-minor for high-sticking at 16:07.
Nine seconds before the first of those two penalties was to expire, Jonathan Drouin beat Penguins goalie Matt Murray from the top of the left circle to tie the game, 1-1.
The Penguins have given up at least one man-advantage goal in seven of their past nine games.
They managed to kill a slashing minor assessed to Crosby at 1:01 of the second, but fell behind, 2-1, when Valtteri Filppula beat Murray from below the right dot at 3:38 to cap a two-on-one break.
That marked just the second time in seven games that Tampa Bay generated two goals during regulation time.
At that point, the Lightning seemed to remember how much fun that goal-scoring thing can be, and Drouin struck again at 10:19 to put Tampa Bay in front by two.
He outraced Penguins defenseman Ian Cole to a puck, then flipped a backhander past Murray for his second of the game.
The Penguins, who had scored on just one of their previous 32 tries with the extra man, got a power-play goal from Malkin at 17:25 to make it 3-2. Malkin took a feed from Phil Kessel and beat Vasilevskiy from the left hash for his 11th of the season.
Malkin's goal apparently triggered some muscle-memory for the power play, because it scored again at 5:08 of the third, as Crosby got No. 20 from the left hash, again off a set-up by Kessel.
Malkin got yet another man-advantage goal at 8:36, scoring from near the right dot to put the Penguins up, 4-3.
