Sidney Crosby has earned his reputation, and a pretty nice living, largely on the strength of his talents as a set-up man.

Sure, he has scored more goals than most, but in general, he's more likely to pass a puck than to shoot it, if the circumstances permit.

So when he wound up from inside the right circle during a third-period power play at Mellon Arena last night, a lot of people probably assumed that he was bluffing, that he was fully intent on getting the puck to a teammate.

Those people turned out to be correct, because Crosby threw a pass to Bill Guerin, who beat Colorado goalie Peter Budaj from along the goal line to the left of the net for what became the winner in the Penguins' 4-1 victory.

But it turned out that they were wrong, too, because Crosby really did consider throwing the puck on goal before opting to slide it to Guerin.

"I was thinking, 'Shot,' " Crosby said. "I still had my head up [and] I saw Billy kind of getting himself in a position off to the side."

Whether Crosby convinced the crowd he was going to shoot didn't matter, because he certainly seem to get Budaj to believe he would.

Crosby's fake froze him, and that prevented Budaj from getting into position to stop Guerin's shot after the pass went to him.

"If he'd telegraphed the pass, [Budaj] is going to read it," Guerin said. "Sid sold the pass pretty good."

Crosby, who pushed his goals total to 19, has been doing a lot of things pretty well lately.

Last night, he scored two goals and set up another, giving him 11 points in the past three games.

"Sid is playing very well now," said teammate Evgeni Malkin, who had three assists. "I hope he wins the scoring title. I'm enjoying playing with him and seeing his leadership. We will follow him.

"He's playing every shift 100 percent and shooting more now, great shots, and more goals."

Guerin's goal came one second after the front end of a five-on-three advantage expired, and gave the Penguins a power-play score for just the second time in five games.

Their power play has been a disappointment for most of the season -- it has converted on 18 of 125 chances -- and Guerin's goal underscored what a difference-maker it can be.

"Special teams are going to win you games," Guerin said. "They won us a game tonight. It was not our best game, against a good hockey team ... the power play came through."

The victory was the Penguins' fifth consecutive at Mellon Arena, their third in a row overall and raised their record to 20-9.

T.J. Galiardi gave Colorado its only lead of the game, 1-0, with a power-play goal at 5:02 of the opening period. He set up at the edge of the crease and steered in a feed from Darcy Tucker, who was behind the goal line.

That was one of just 16 shots the Avalanche would generate in the game, and the only one that made it past goalie Marc-Andre Fleury.

Crosby pulled the Penguins even 6.1 seconds before the first intermission, as he tapped in a feed from Mike Rupp to cap a two-on-one break against Avalanche defenseman Adam Foote.

"We've seemed to have a knack for scoring timely goals," Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said.

The Penguins outshot Colorado, 14-1, in the final period. And while the Avalanche looked very much like a team that had played at Florida a night earlier and traveled several hours to get here, Guerin said the difference in the third was that the Penguins played the way they had hoped to for 60 minutes.

"They did a great job of getting to us the first two periods," he said. "And I don't think we were executing at the level we had to against their team.

"They're very aggressive, they take away time and space. If you don't execute and just throw the puck, they're going to be on you and they're going to make it difficult for you. In the third, we kept it simple, but we executed better and we kept getting pucks into their end."

And two more into the Colorado net after Guerin scored, as Jordan Staal hit an empty net with 48.9 seconds left in regulation, and Crosby did likewise with 30.7 seconds left to give the Penguins their margin of victory.

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.