The Penguins have earned 77 points this season.

Ty Conklin has been in goal when they have gotten 37 of those.

Forget the role he has played in the Penguins being just two points out of first place in the Eastern Conference. If not for Conklin, they might well be sellers instead of prospective buyers as tomorrow's NHL trade deadline approaches.

But in the minutes after the Penguins' 2-1 shootout loss to San Jose at Mellon Arena yesterday, Conklin wasn't thinking about all the points the Penguins have picked up in his two months as the No. 1 goalie.

He was fixated on the one that eluded them after he failed to stop any of the Sharks' three shooters -- Joe Pavelski, Jonathan Cheechoo and Jeremy Roenick -- in the shootout. Especially when Erik Christensen and Jarkko Ruutu had beaten San Jose goalie Evgeni Nabokov for the Penguins.

"When your team scores two out of three in the shootout, at the very least you need to go to extra shooters [to determine a winner]," Conklin said. "I have to make a save in the shootout at some point."

Perhaps, but he also was the primary reason the Penguins were able to take the game beyond regulation, as he turned aside 36 of 37 shots.

"He got us the point," defenseman Ryan Whitney said.

The loss dropped the Penguins to 35-21-7, and leaves them two points behind first-place New Jersey in the Atlantic race. What their lineup will look like when they visit the New York Islanders at 7:08 p.m. tomorrow remains to be seen, because the game will start about four hours after the trade deadline passes.

The Penguins don't appear to be planning any epic changes, although they are believed to be actively seeking a defenseman. They are hardly the only club looking to do so, however, which means it shapes up as a seller's market.

One guy who probably won't agonize, even a little, over the looming deadline is center Evgeni Malkin. He was held scoreless for the second consecutive game -- the first time that has happened since Dec. 15-18 -- and slipped into a tie with Washington winger Alex Ovechkin for first place in the NHL scoring race.

"He's a great player and can do a lot of damage in this league," said Sharks coach Ron Wilson, whose strategy for containing Malkin centered on matching defensemen Douglas Murray and Marc-Edouard Vlasic or Christian Ehrhoff against him.

Stingy defense is the cornerstone of virtually everything San Jose does. The Sharks' stifling style assured that the pregame breakdown of a Zamboni, which hemorrhaged red hydraulic fluid from center ice to the Zamboni entrance in Section A32, was arguably the most entertaining sequence of the afternoon.

"They win hockey games because they play like that, and that's the bottom line," said Christensen, whose power-play goal at 10:02 of the third period forced overtime. "They're very well-coached, and the players buy into that system every shift."

San Jose got its only goal in regulation at 3:10 of the third, when Cheechoo got a pass from Joe Thornton and held off Whitney with his leg before throwing the puck past Conklin.

The Penguins had a few opportunities before that, like when Petr Sykora put a shot off the left post with a little more than five minutes left in the second period, but not nearly as many as they generated in a 4-3 come-from-ahead overtime loss to Ottawa the day before.

Fortunately for the Penguins, Sharks enforcer Jody Shelley was guilty of an unforced error at 9:47 of the third, when he picked up a hooking minor. That gave the Penguins the third of their four power plays and Christensen, playing for the first time after sitting out five games with a shoulder injury, made the most of it by one-timing a Sergei Gonchar pass by Nobokov from the bottom of the right circle.

His goal gave the Penguins a predictable boost, but that momentum didn't translate into a go-ahead goal and the Sharks were perfect from the field when the game was on the line during the shootout.

"We worked hard for that point we got," Conklin said. "But there was a second point there up for grabs, and it certainly could have been had."