NEWARK, N.J. -- Brent Johnson was having one of those games, the kind when a goalie just knows he's going to stop everything he sees.

New Jersey threw 32 pucks at him, and Johnson got a skate or a stick or a glove on every last one of 'em.

Except for the one he never saw until he fished it out of the net.

Trouble is, that turned out to be the only goal the Devils needed in what became a 2-0 victory against the Penguins at the Prudential Center last night.

Niclas Bergfors scored it at 1:48 of the opening period, when his shot from below the hash mark along the right-wing boards sneaked past several Penguins and ended up behind Johnson.

"It was a seeing-eye puck," Johnson said. "It's unfortunate that it happened really quick in the game. It just went through a bunch of legs and before I had time to react, it was in the net."

Another goal or two like that and Bergfors will be ready for formal induction into the ranks of the game's great Penguins-killers. That goal was his 13th, four of which have come against the Penguins.

The defeat was the third in a row for the Penguins, their worst skid since they dropped four in a row Nov. 5-12. But while the snapshot of the week beginning Dec. 27, with three losses in a span of four days, is rather disheartening, the bigger picture of their first half is not.

Despite losing all four games they've played against the Devils, the Penguins (26-14-1) are challenging the likes of New Jersey, Washington, San Jose and Chicago for first place in the overall standings. They haven't played their best, by any means, but they haven't been bad all that often, either.

"Our team has shown we're going to work and we're going to try to get better," coach Dan Bylsma said. "We're going to know what our game is and get to it, and get to it often.

"When you end up with 26 wins, you [have done] a lot of good things."

Bylsma noted that several facets of the Penguins' game can use a significant upgrade, and their power play is at the top of that list.

It wasn't a particular factor in this defeat, however, because it never got an opportunity until there were just 86 seconds left in regulation. The Penguins added to their advantage by replacing Johnson with an extra attacker, but Jamie Langenbrunner of the Devils scored into am empty net with 11.8 seconds to play to seal the victory.

The Penguins, of course, would have preferred a few more tries with the extra man, but Bill Guerin declined to make an issue of it.

"What are you going to do?" he said. "Some games are like that. We felt we could have had a couple more, but you always do."

There are a lot of reasons the Penguins have lost all four games against New Jersey, but Devils goalie Martin Brodeur is the biggest.

The Penguins haven't gotten a puck past him in the past 168 minutes, 28 seconds and he has rejected 124 of the 126 shots they've thrown at him in 2009-10.

"It's frustrating, but tonight we worked really hard," center Sidney Crosby said. "We had our chances, and Marty played great. He made some big saves."

Bylsma said the game "had the feel and look of a playoff game," and that included players on both sides sacrificing their bodies to block shots. Penguins defenseman Sergei Gonchar was hobbled when he took one by Rolston off the outside of his right foot late in regulation.

Whether the puck caused more than a bruise and some pain wasn't immediately known.

"He's hobbling," Bylsma said. "It's a situation where you take a lot of those, and you seem to be fine. We're hoping that's the case."

Losing Gonchar would be more of a setback than anything that happened last night. Much as the Penguins would like to beat the Devils sometime this season, they realized they played well in this game.

"It's a little frustrating because we know we did everything we wanted to do," Johnson said. "But don't have much to show for it."

And so they enter the second half of the season with a three-game losing streak, but confident they will do even better in the second set of 41 games than they did in the first.

"We know what our game looks like, and hopefully, we're building an identity," Crosby said. "The last few games have been tough for us, but when we look at the first half as a whole -- considering the injuries and everything -- I think we should be pretty happy.

"Not satisfied, but certainly happy with the way we've played."

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.