With most of three days to ruminate, the Penguins' thought processes regarding the playoff series that resumes tonight in Ottawa might easily have wandered across multiple disciplines.

(Or they'll have spent most of the downtime before Game 3 playing video games, but that would seriously disrupt our little working premise and is hereby summarily dismissed.)

Cherry-picking some prominent numbers from Games 1 and 2, Michel Therrien's team could easily fool itself. Victories are 2-0 for the Penguins. Goals are 9-3 for the Penguins, and were at one point 7-0. The Senators failed to score for the first 91 minutes, 25 seconds of the series. Shots are 89-56 for the Penguins.

As a kind of soft science, those are the persuasive highlights of a much broader schematic, but even as art, or as the feel of this series, a sense of domination is readily available. Game 2 in particular -- and this was lost somewhat in the mesmeric chaos of Friday night's last-minute Penguins victory -- was from my view one of the greatest hockey games ever presented at the moldering Arena, and the home team was little less than theatrically brilliant.

Though the point has been made often enough, seeing all the facets of this team's offensive capabilities on glimmering display at once is memorably impressive. The Penguins put 54 pucks on the net in every available style and from every available angle. Sergei Gonchar's goal was a classic long-range slapper. Petr Sykora's two were both the end result of swirling offensive choreography. Evgeni Malkin took the game over for critical stretches. Sidney Crosby had four assists. Marian Hossa at one point skated the puck parallel to the end line and through the goal mouth behind the goaltender, embattled Senator Martin Gerber.

For Gerber, Penguins were simply everywhere. It was like "Snakes on a Plane." I guess that officially ends the "art" part of this discussion, but whether as some soft science or as art, the Penguins could be excused for feeling pretty good about themselves today.

Except for this:

"We could have lost them both," Ryan Malone was saying over the weekend. "They showed a lot of character in that last game. It's going to be a great atmosphere in Ottawa. It's going to be a battle. It's not close to being over. You never know."

Malone is dead right. The Penguins, in fact, could have lost Game 2 right up until the moment Malone won it, snapping a 3-3 tie with his heroic wrap-around with just 1:02 left in the game. Not only did the Senators bluster back from a 3-0 hole in the second game, they had everything but an embossed invitation to rub out a 2-0 deficit in Game 1 with twin 5-on-3 opportunities they failed to liquidate.

Strangely enough, all of that might have been, from the Penguins' perspective, a good thing.

"With that three-goal lead [Friday], sometimes you can lose your focus," Therrien said as his club readied for the trip to Canada. "But that can be good because it's a learning process. I really like the way that our players are focused right now, and the way they've been playing on the road.

"Momentum is on our side, and we want to keep it on our side."

Because you can't always get what you want (good title for a song, perhaps featuring the London Bach Choir), the Penguins might not win Games 3 or 4, but I don't think it will be because they've gotten ahead of themselves.

Nor do I think that it'll be even vaguely related to their sketchy postseason pedigree, expressed by the fact that the previous time they were up 2-0 in the postseason, it took them seven games to dismiss Buffalo (2001), or the fact that two other times they were up 2-0, they failed altogether (against Philadelphia in 2000 and the Islanders in 1975).

More likely, it'll be because the Senators suddenly stop taking so many stupid penalties, or simply because Bryan Murray's team is so overdue to string together a number of nights of blatant competence.

Ottawa, last spring's Eastern Conference champions, lest we forget, has now won exactly three of its past 12 games, and 14 of its past 40.

"I think our guys played hard and battled," said Murray right before packing. "I have to believe they will play well at home."

Uh-huh. But that's a thought process with few viable options. There's no point in having a rumination on ruination.