Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik went 180 regular-season games without scoring before getting a goal at Carolina Feb. 14, and there's every reason to believe it might be 180 more before he gets another.

Unless he goes into a slump, of course.

Nonetheless, Orpik nearly scored in the second period of the Penguins' 5-3 victory against Ottawa in Game 2 of their opening-round playoff series at Mellon Arena Friday, stepping out of the penalty box just as Evgeni Malkin lunged to knock the puck ahead and put him in alone on Senators goalie Martin Gerber.

"It was actually pretty funny," Orpik said.

"[The penalty box attendant] said, 'I think you're going to get a breakaway here.' I said to him, 'Don't hold your breath. It's my fifth year, and I haven't had one yet.'

"Sure enough, [Malkin] made an unbelievable pass."

After pulling in that feed, Orpik went to the net, put the puck on his backhand and attempted to slip it between Gerber's legs.

"I just tried to get him to move his stick," Orpik said.

"He moved his stick, but he somehow kept his pads together."

If scoring the first seven goals of this series lulled any of the Penguins into thinking the Senators would placidly accept having their season end in mid-April, Ottawa's comeback from a three-goal deficit in Game 2 surely dispelled those notions.

Similarly, history suggests that if anyone believes that taking a 2-0 lead in the series all but formally assured the Penguins of a place in the second round, they're guilty of reaching a premature conclusion.

The Penguins, you see, have lost two of the 10 previous series in which they won Games 1 and 2.

The first time came in Round 2 in 1975, when they actually took a 3-0 lead against the New York Islanders, then became the second team in National Hockey League history to lose a series after building such an advantage.

The Penguins also won the first two games of Round 2 in 2000 -- in Philadelphia, no less -- before losing the next four.

Those defeats included an overtime loss at Mellon Arena in Game 3 and a five-overtime loss there in Game 4.

The Senators, it should be noted, are 0-6 when losing the first two games of a series.

Need evidence of how Sidney Crosby's excellence is almost taken for granted?

Consider Game 2, when Crosby became the eighth player in franchise history -- and the first since Mario Lemieux on April 22, 1996 -- to record four assists in a playoff game.

And wasn't recognized as one of the game's three stars.

Admittedly, two of his assists came in the final 62 seconds of play, and it's hard to argue that the guys who were so honored didn't deserve it. (1. Petr Sykora, two goals. 2. Malkin, three assists. 3. Ryan Malone, winning goal, empty-net goal, assist.)

Heck, Senators goalie Martin Gerber, who made 49 saves, was worthy of it, too.

Still, it says something about where the bar is set for Crosby that he had a game few players could dream of duplicating, and it went almost unnoticed.

It was obvious to just about everyone in Mellon Arena Friday that Ottawa's Martin Lapointe high-sticked Jarkko Ruutu at 18:48 of the third period, giving the Penguins the power play that led to Malone's winning goal 10 seconds later.

But while most people realized what happened because they saw it, Ruutu knew he had been clipped mostly because of what he didn't see.

Lapointe's stick, you see, caught Ruutu in the right eye, dislodging his contact lens and leaving him with extremely limited vision in it until Ruutu was able to get the lens back in place.

"It was blurry for a while," he said. "My contacts are different. I have astigmatism, so they have to be [positioned] a certain way. The weight has to be on the bottom."

Ten players participated in the Penguins' optional, highly informal workout yesterday. Frank Buonomo, the team's director of team services, donned Ty Conklin's pads and tended goal. ... Weather permitting, a video screen will be set up again outside Gate 3 at Mellon Arena tomorrow so fans can watch Game 3.