Sabres goalie Ryan Miller is called for a tripping penalty on Sidney Crosby in the third period Monday at Mellon Arena.

The Penguins can't explain it.

Nobody can, really.

There's simply no logical reason they should own Buffalo's Ryan Miller, who might be the finest goaltender in the world these days.

But they do, at least this season.

The Penguins put five of 31 shots behind him in a 5-4 victory against the Sabres Monday night at Mellon Arena. In their only previous meeting, Miller gave up three goals on 11 shots, which means the Penguins are shooting 8 for 42 from the field against him in 2009-10.

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Sidney Crosby accounted for five of the Penguins' shots and three of their goals Monday night, as he rang up his fifth career hat trick. Fact is, Crosby didn't have nearly as much trouble scoring on Miller as the Penguins did trying to explain why they're so successful against him.

"I don't have an answer for it," coach Dan Bylsma said. "We watch him and know he's a very good goalie, one of the best in the league."

Not good enough, at least on this night, to help his team protect the 3-1 lead it had built before the middle of the second period.

"We should be better than that," Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. "And we weren't."

The victory, coupled with a 2-1 shootout victory Sunday against Detroit, gave the Penguins back-to-back victories on home ice for the first time since Dec. 12-15.

It also raised their record to 35-21-1 and moved them to within one point of first-place New Jersey in the Atlantic Division, although the Devils have three games in hand.

Mark Letestu staked the Penguins to a 1-0 lead on the first shift of the game, directing a Tyler Kennedy feed past Miller to cap a three-on-one 47 seconds into the period. The goal was Letestu's first in the NHL, creating an enduring memory.

"I can't wipe the smile off my face," he said. "It's a pretty special moment. And the fact that it came in a win means I can enjoy it that much more."

That didn't look like it would be the case for much of the evening, however.

Derek Roy tied the score on a power play at 5:15, and Thomas Vanek put Buffalo in front 48 seconds later. The Sabres then went ahead, 3-1, at 7:32 of the second, as Tim Kennedy deflected a Mike Grier feed past goalie Marc-Andre Fleury at the end of a sequence that began with a Crosby giveaway.

At that point, the Penguins' chances of escaping the game with one point, let alone two, seemed a bit less than microscopic. The Sabres, after all, began the evening as the third-stingiest defensive team in the NHL, allowing an average of just 2.3 goals per game, and are 20-0 when leading at the second intermission.

"We were concerned, obviously," center Jordan Staal said.

It showed, and the Penguins got around that latter detail by making sure Buffalo wasn't in front by the time 40 minutes expired, running off four goals in a span of eight minutes, two seconds.

Crosby got them back into the game with a power-play goal at 10:53, beating Miller from the bottom of the right circle after getting a deft pass from Alex Goligoski. Evgeni Malkin got the second assist, running his points streak to eight games.

Staal pulled them even at 14:06, as Malkin fed him a pass and Staal put a shot off Miller and into the net for his 14th of the season and first in 13 games.

Miller was guilty of a costly gaffe at 17:30, when he missed teammate Tyler Myers with a pass and had it end up on the stick of Crosby, who tossed it into the net from inside the left circle.

"We made the mistake to the wrong guy, obviously," Ruff said.

Crosby then got what proved to be the winner at 18:55 on his 37th of the season, tying Patrick Marleau of San Jose for the league lead when he teamed up with Pascal Dupuis on a two-on-one break.

"I like the way our team responded, not just our captain," Bylsma said. "We stuck with it, [down] 3-1 against a team that was coming pretty hard at us. We got it back, righted the ship."

The Sabres finally snapped the Penguins' run of unanswered goals when Jason Pominville scored on a power play with three minutes to go in regulation, but couldn't manufacture the goal that would have forced overtime, even after Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik was penalized for holding at 17:56.

"Collectively, in the second and the third, we really raised our play," Crosby said.

And no one lifted it higher than he did.

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.