The Penguins had already proven that they could get by without Stanley Cup Final Game 7 MVP Max Talbot as they roared out to a 10-2-0 record to start the season. They even proved that they could win without Sergei Gonchar on the blueline. Then they proved they could win without Mister (Tyler) Kennedy who has provided a lot of offense on the young season. But what about a win without Evgeni Malkin? Yep, they did that too beating the Blue Jackets in Columbus last night.

It was what people in sports call a character win, when a team that is beat up and missing key components still finds a way to muck it out and get the victory. Yeah, Columbus is struggling after a decent start but they still found a way to win even after falling behind first 2-0 and then 3-1. Oh, and I don’t want to overlook the contribution of thousands of Pittsburgh fans that made the trek to Columbus and repeatedly roared to life to drown out the hometown fans either.

After Rick Nash (7, scored twice, Chris Kunitz (2) scored his second goal in two nights (after a long drought) and short handed to cut the Penguins deficit in half. But when Derek Dorsett (1) scored late in the second to make it 3-1 it would have been easy for the Penguins to mail it in and start thinking about a Halloween night showdown against Minnesota.

In the third the Blue Jackets played conservative and Brent Johnson stopped all six shots he faced. Meanwhile the Penguins, especially late, put their noses down and played hard. With the clock winding inside three minutes to play it was Ruslan Fedotenko (3) who found a rebound and buried it.

3-2 Columbus.

Just 39 seconds later it was Alex Goligoski (5) who wristed a shot past Mason.

3-3 and a tie hockey game.

Columbus held Pittsburgh off in the overtime and then the cardiac kids took the game into a shootout. In the end the winning shot was not that glorious or awe inspiring. But it did come off of the stick of Sidney Crosby. In the shootout Crosby wound his way down the ice and flipped a puck at Mason who looked to stop the puck in his chest. But as the play continued, Mason drifted, could not find the puck, it dropped to the ice and momentum carried it between his stick and his pads.

Victory to the Penguins.

At 11-2-0 the Penguins own the best record in the league and kept pace with Colorodo (10-2-2) who also has 22 pts. Their opponent tonight is one of the worst teams in the league as Minnesota (4-9-0, 8 pts)comes to the Igloo. It’s Halloween and hopefully the injury riddled Penguins won’t play too scary and notch a win against a team that is just two for their last five and three of their last seven.

The Penguins need to look into a good exterminator because their locker room is infested with injury bugs. So far every time a Pittsburgh Penguin has gone down, the team has kept right on winning. With Gonchar out the team has hardly looked like it missed a beat. With Mr. Hockeyburgh 2009, Tyler Kennedy, out and his goal production absent from the lineup on Wednesday night the team slaughtered the Candiens. But now with Evgeni Malkin out two, perhaps three weeks, with a sore shoulder the team must overcome another hurdle.

The Penguins are perhaps lucky to be be 10-2-0 and leading the Atlantic this season early on because the odds of them going 10-2-0 in their next twelve is going to be a tall order. Games against the Kings, Sharks and Devils will be certainly offset by games against the Ducks, Panthers and the Wild. But they still are going to have to have a lot of guys play above their level to be as impressive over that stretch. Most fans would probably be happy with a .500 record but be sure the Penguins players will not be.

Staal is getting a promotion, basically by default, to the second line because any line he centers in the absence of Malkin is the Pen’s #2 unit. Players like Rupp and Adams are going to be called upon to do even more.

And it all starts tonight as the Pens visit the so-so Columbus Bluejackets. A win tonight helps set them off the next part of this year’s journey on the right foot. A loss probably makes them wonder what they will need to do to succeed for a couple weeks until Malkin returns.

The Columbus Blue Jackets came into Pittsburgh hoping to win a game. The Penguins hoped that their comeback against Tampa Bay would not be the end of their good fortune. Thanks to Marc-Andre Fleury, the Penguins got what they wanted. Fleury stoned the Blue Jackets on 15 first period shots and was again huge in the third stopping 10 of 11 and 33 of 34 overall. He won the Penguins this game.

And it was his goal tending that allowed the Penguins to eventually get a 1-0 lead in the second off of Kris Letang’s 4th of the year. Letang (5) would add another nearly ten minutes later to make the score 3-0. In the end the Penguins wound up with a 4-1 victory and two wins in a row playing a fairly consistent and gritty game. Crosby (21) scored an empty netter at the end to seal the win.

Columbus fell to 24-23-5 on the year and the win, while it helped the Penguins moral did not move them up in the standings. They are still in 10th place behind Carolina who also has 57pts but also a game in hand. They are one point back of the Panthers that have two games in hand.

The real test is this Sunday against a struggling Detroit squad that is only 4-4-2 in their last ten but coming off two wins against St. Louis and Pheonix with a game against the Oilers the night before. The Penguins must play hard and really must win that game to prove that they are ready to make a run here with time and games running out.