Brent Johnson says he did not take it personally.

Hard to understand why he wouldn't have, though.

After all, Johnson works behind a team that is averaging better than four goals per game. Most of the time, anyway.

The exception: When Johnson is in goal.

Indeed, 40 minutes into what became a 3-2 shootout victory against Florida at Mellon Arena last night, his teammates had generated precisely zero goals for him during his first five periods of work this season.

That does not give a goalie much margin for error, although Johnson insisted the lack of support had not become a source of serious angst.

"It wasn't for a lack of trying," he said. "[Panthers goalie Tomas] Vokoun came up with a lot of big saves. We were pressuring a good amount in the second period, and he was just making saves."

Vokoun did that right up until 2:14 of the third period when Sidney Crosby, playing in his 300th NHL game, scored from below the right dot one second after a two-man advantage expired. Crosby then put the game into overtime with a short-handed goal at 16:41, when he converted a set-up by Evgeni Malkin.

The Penguins piled up 43 shots by the end of overtime, but those were the only two that eluded Vokoun.

"We've got to give [Johnson] more help," said Crosby, the only player on either side to get a goal during the shootout. "I'm sure he'd like to have more help. We owe him a few more goals."

The ones they got against Florida were a start, considering that in Johnson's only previous appearance, the Penguins had been shut out by Phoenix.

That's still their only loss this season. The victory last night extended the Penguins' winning streak to seven games, raised their league-best record to 9-1 and allows them to enter their game against New Jersey tonight at Mellon Arena with nine victories in October for the first time in franchise history.

The Penguins are the first team to win nine of its first 10 games in the season after a Stanley Cup victory, and their 18 points match the most earned by a defending champion in its first 10 games. (Edmonton went 8-0-2 in 1984-85, a mark the Penguins duplicated in 1992-93.)

The Florida game was the Penguins' first since Sergei Gonchar broke his left wrist in a 5-1 victory against St. Louis Tuesday. In his absence, Kris Letang and Alex Goligoski manned the points on the No. 1 power play as the Penguins went 1 for 6 with the extra man.

"We had a couple of chances, but we're not on the same page right now," Letang said. "We have to make some adjustments."

Adapting to life without Gonchar was tough enough, but it could have been even worse for the Penguins because center Jordan Staal sat out the final eight minutes, 56 seconds of the second period and the first 40 seconds of the third because of an unspecified injury.

Although Staal declined to divulge the nature of his problem, he said it will not prevent him from playing against the Devils.

Something apparently prevented most of the Penguins from playing during the opening period against the Panthers as Florida dominated it and got two unanswered goals by Steven Reinprecht.

"We came out a little tentative, and they played really well," defenseman Brooks Orpik said. "You look at their lineup on paper, and I think they're a better team than their record (2-5-1) reflects so far.

"It was a combination of them being a little more ready to play than we were and we were a little slow getting to loose pucks."

The Penguins regained their equilibrium during the second and surged in the third. Crosby got them within a goal then, as regulation was winding down, coach Dan Bylsma deployed him with Malkin to kill the end of an interference minor to Orpik.

That moved paid off with Crosby's first short-handed goal in the NHL.

That's the last either team would get until Crosby buried a puck behind Vokoun during the second round of the shootout. Which was enough to turn a somewhat flawed performance into a couple of points.

"Every game's not going to be perfect," Crosby said. "We found a way to win."

Penguins Plus, a blog by Dave Molinari and Shelly Anderson, is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.