PHILADELPHIA -- Evgeni Malkin logged 37 minutes, 31 seconds of ice time during the Penguins' two-game, season-opening series at Wells Fargo Center.
That's a pretty good workload, but Malkin's next point still will be his first of 2020-21.
Which means he is tied in the team scoring race with, among others, linemate Jason Zucker.
Kris Letang, cornerstone of the Penguins' defense corps, was on the ice for seven of the 11 goals the Flyers scored in those games, including all five in Philadelphia'a 5-2 victory Friday night.
Tristan Jarry started both games in goal, and stopped 22 of 31 shots. Six of those shots -- and three of those saves -- came before he was pulled Friday.
Jake Guentzel assisted on the Penguins' first goal Friday, but has been a virtual non-factor in the offense. Especially for a guy projected to be the Penguins' top goal-producer.
Now, sub-par performances by some of the Penguins' top guys aren't the only reason they've started the season in an 0-2 hole, but it's pretty hard to miss that some of their best players haven't been some of their best players.
Well, for some people, anyway, although Mike Sullivan isn't one of them.
He made that point rather emphatically after the game Friday.
"I'm not sure who's making that assessment," he said. "Is that your assessment, that our best players aren't our best players? These guys have had a number of chances and the puck didn't go in the net for them.
"I know they're working hard. I thought that tonight we played with a lot of emotion, had a lot of energy. I thought we controlled a lot of territory. I believe these guys will score. They're talented players. It didn't go in for us tonight, but certainly, there was a lot to like in this game."
Nonetheless, while perspiration matters, production is what gets reflected in the standings.
Two games is an extremely small sample size, and it's possible that when the Penguins face Washington Sunday at noon at PPG Paints Arena, Malkin will put up five or six points, Letang will transform himself into the early favorite to win the Norris Trophy and Jarry will reject 45 quality shots from the Capitals en route to a shutout.
But if the adage that a team's best players have to be its best players in order for the group to be successful is accurate, the Penguins could be in a perilous stretch.
Some of the players on whom they rely most are playing well -- Sidney Crosby already has a couple of goals, for example, and John Marino looks more like a No. 1 defenseman-in-waiting every shift -- and others, like the members of the Jared McCann-Mark Jankowski-Brandon Tanev line, are exceeding all reasonable expectations.
Still, the Penguins don't figure to get any sustained traction until most of their core guys produce to their potential, and Malkin's line, which has Zucker and Bryan Rust on the wings, might be the unit to jump-start the process.
"In that first game, we probably could have been better, myself included," Rust said. "In this game, we had a fair bit of chances."
Malkin is the driving force on that line, and Sullivan expressed confidence that his failure to crack the scoresheet is a short-lived hiccup.
"I'm not concerned," Sullivan said. "We're two games in. (Malkin) is a good player. We know he is. I think when (Malkin) doesn't score, he tends to be hard on himself and we're just going to encourage him to just keep playing the game hard, keep playing the right way."
But while he might not be fretting about Malkin, or any other individual, Sullivan presumably is concerned about the way his team surrendered goals during the first two games.
He surely wasn't pleased when the Flyers, already up 2-0 on a pair of Travis Konecny goals, went ahead by three because the Penguins treated playing in their own end as a spectator sport, basically watching while Ivan Provorov scored what proved to be the game-winner.
It was a glaring defensive lapse, but hardly the only one of which the Penguins were guilty in these games.
Rust said afterward that, "we'll clear up those breakdowns," which likely would go a long way toward improving Jarry's emotional well-being, to say nothing of his goals-against average.
Casey DeSmith, who replaced Jarry after it was 3-0, believes he is "the perfect candidate to bounce back" from a couple of rough stars because of his even-keeled mindset.
"He doesn't get too high or too low," DeSmith said.
Maintaining that attitude, though, could get to be a challenge if the guys in front of him don't clean up their play. Jarry has allowed a few goals of dubious pedigree, but more often has been put in low-percentage situations by his teammates.
"It's tough that we've given up that amount of goals and not a lot of chances, but in his defense, some of the chances were high-quality," he said. "And you have to give Philadelphia credit: They converted on the opportunities they got."
The Penguins were unable to do likewise, at least after they'd gotten quick goals from Crosby and Tanev following the switch to DeSmith.
Most of the blame for that belongs to Flyers goalie Carter Hart, who stopped multiple odd-man breaks and close-range chances.
"Tonight's game, there's no doubt that Carter Hart is the difference," Flyers coach Alain Vigneault said.
Identifying Hart's best save is difficult, in part because there were so many candidates, but a top contender might be when he denied Crosby on a two-on-one break with Guentzel, triggering a sequence that culminated with Konecny scoring the second of his three goals seconds later.
There were others, though. A backhander by Zucker, who broke in alone during the second period. A Jankowski deflection in the third.
"We had a ton of chances," Rust said.
And at least a half-ton of disappointments. Which is something Philadelphia opponents might experience on a regular basis, because Hart looks like he could be very good for a very long time.
"The scary thing is, he can be better," Flyers forward Jakub Voracek said. "And he knows it."
Part of the reason Hart had to play so well Friday was that the Flyers lost center Sean Couturier, arguably the NHL's top defensive forward, on his second shift because of a shoulder injury.
The Penguins, though, never were able to exploit his absence enough to get a tying goal before Konecny choked off their comeback hopes by completing his hat trick at 12:53 of the third, six seconds after the last of the Penguins' six minor penalties in the game expired.
And so the Penguins went back across the Commonwealth with as many points as they had when they arrived.
Zero.
But they seem certain that whatever issues they had against the Flyers can be resolved with persistence and commitment.
"We just have to stay with it here," Sullivan said. "We have to stick together and stay with it."
• The Penguins were caught with too many men on the ice for the second game in a row. Unforced errors like that put a lot of strain on a penalty-killing unit that is still trying to get its footing.
• After a miserable showing on faceoffs in the opener, the Penguins actually had a slight advantage during the rematch, going 26-24. They were led, again, by Crosby, who won 15 of 22, including an 8-1 record in the opening period.
• The Penguins twice aborted second-period power plays with unnecessary penalties in the offensive zone. Letang hooked Justin Braun on the first one and McCann elbowed Travis Sanheim on the other.
• Crosby accounted for six of the Penguins' 33 shots, twice as many as any teammate.
SULLIVAN'S LINES
Jake Guentzel-Sidney Crosby-Evan Rodrigues
Jason Zucker-Evgeni Malkin-Bryan Rust
Jared McCann-Mark Jankowski-Brandon Tanev
Sam Lafferty-Teddy Blueger-Colton Sceviour
Brian Dumoulin-Kris Letang
Marcus Petterson-John Marino
Mike Matheson-Chad Ruhwedel
VIGNEAULT'S LINES
Oskar Lindblom-Sean Couterier-Travis Konecny
Claude Giroux-Kevin Hayes-Joel Farabee
James van Riemsdyk-Nolan Patrick-Jakub Voracek
Michael Raffl-Scott Laughton-Nicolas Aube-Kubel
Ivan Provorov-Justin Braun
Travis Sanheim-Philippe Myers
Robert Hagg-Erik Gustafsson