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Q: When will we learn: Kick Capitals' butt for two periods, turtle in the third, lose; kick Rangers' butt for two periods, turtle in third, lose? If it works, why are we trying to fix it? So far, we are down three points we should easily have, and two conference opponents each have two points they should not have. When will we learn?

Bill Rote, Springfield, Va.

MOLINARI: Sorry, don't have the answer for that one, and it's reasonably safe to assume that no one else does, either. And if by chance someone does, the suggestion here is that he/she contact the Penguins at the earliest opportunity and offer to sell that information at a hefty price.

First, give the Capitals and Rangers credit for not simply accepting the defeats that seemed likely, if not inevitable, in the games you cited. If those teams had gone along with the apparent certainty of losing, nothing the Penguins could have done to sabotage their own victories would have made a difference.

Conversely, had the Penguins not abandoned the approach they used to build solids leads on both occasions, chances are that neither the Capitals nor the Rangers would have been able to salvage anything more than a little dignity out of the third period. What the Penguins did -- adopt a passive, tentative approach rather than focusing on controlling the puck and creating plays, the way they did while building their leads ---was all too apparent. (Anyone being told that New York ran up an 18-2 advantage in shots during the third period Saturday probably could reach that conclusion without knowing, let alone seeing, anything else that transpired during those 20 minutes.)

The far more significant, and perplexing, matter is why the Penguins have done that this several times during the early weeks of this season. Certainly it doesn't seem to be that coach Michel Therrien is instructing his players to slip into hockey's equivalent of football's "prevent defense" or the "four corners" offense popularized by former North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith when he was trying to protect a lead.

It is easy to suggest that the absences of Sergei Gonchar and Ryan Whitney, the Penguins' two most skilled offensive defensemen, are most evident at times like the third period at Madison Square Garden, and perhaps there's something to that. Gonchar and Whitney not only have the ability to make plays, but no reservations about trying to do so when there's a reasonable expectation of success. That isn't necessarily the case with defensemen who don't handle or pass the puck as effectively as they do.

That hardly is a satisfactory explanation for what happened Saturday, though, because the Penguins' defensemen did a good job of getting the puck to the forwards for most of the first two periods, and those forwards weren't shy about battling to maintain control of the puck and trying to manufacture scoring chances. That seemed to change, on all counts, for nearly everyone during the second intermission.

It's understandable, on some levels, that many of the Penguins, particularly their defensemen, are tempted to play cautiously after the team builds a lead. Playing it safe tends to be the default position for guys with limited skills and, with the superb goaltending the Penguins have had this season, it's reasonable to believe that the team can make a multiple-goal lead stand up over a period of so.

The Penguins should have realized by now, though, that sticking with the formula that produced the lead is the logical way to play. It's a simple fact of life in the NHL that opponents are going to make improbable comebacks on occasions -- although whether it's viewed as an amazing comeback or inexcusable collapse depends on the perspective from which it's viewed -- and the Penguins probably will lose some games in which they have leads even if they never stray from a productive strategy for so much as a shift.

The idea, though, is to force an opponent that is trying to wipe out a deficit to expend a lot of its energy defending its own net, to make it fight for the puck every time it wants possession and to go the length of the ice before mounting an attack. Those are things the Penguins didn't do in the third period against Washington and the Rangers, and they have a couple of losses to prove it.

Q: During the game last (Thursday), Sidney Crosby deflected in an Evgeni Malkin shot for the first goal. It was 3-1 when the TV crew determined it was a deflected goal. Is that kind of goal reviewed back in Toronto? If it was determined it was a high-stick, would that have negated all the goals that followed?

Pete Wilton, Oakmont

MOLINARI: NHL officials in Toronto review every goal scored in every game, regardless of whether there is immediate reason to believe it may have been tainted, for whatever reason. They presumably looked at the Crosby goal and decided that he did not have his stick above the level of the crossbar, in which case the goal would be legal.

The surprising thing is that a conclusive decision was made so quickly that there seemed to be no more than the usual amount of downtime before the subsequent faceoff. Televised replays, at least those available through FSN Pittsburgh, did not seem to make it immediately clear, one way or the other, whether the goal should have counted. (The on-ice ruling, by the way, was that it was legit, so the replay would have had to provide conclusive evidence that it should be overturned.)

Getting the puck dropped on the faceoff that followed Crosby's goal had a particular urgency for the Penguins because, once play resumes, the goal could not be disallowed, and anything that followed it would be allowed to stand.