It was a simple move, really, but a crucial part of a pretty power-play goal. Alex Goligoski was the pivot man.

Fellow Penguins point man Sergei Gonchar steered the puck into the neutral zone. When that avenue got crowded, he peeled away into a spin move and passed to Goligoski, who stepped across the blue line to his regular left point position.

Goligoski dished a perfect, short touch pass to forward Evgeni Malkin, who threw a no-look pass through the slot to Sidney Crosby. The modified back-door play led to a deke and a goal by Crosby in the first period of Sunday's 5-4 overtime loss at Washington.

"It was kind of an easy play on my part just to chip it to the middle," said Goligoski, a skilled skater and puck-handler.

Explaining why the young defenseman cooled so drastically and for an extended period after his productive start this season, well, that's not to simple.

Perhaps he was pressing. Or had some bad luck. Or concentrated so much on play in his own end that his rhythm got thrown off.

"Maybe a little bit of everything," Goligoski said. "If I had an answer, I'd tell you and try to use it."

Goligoski spent nearly half of last season in the American Hockey League, something Penguins management has been quick to ascribe to numbers and his two-way contract, not any lack of readiness for the NHL.

At the start of what everyone knew would be his first full season in the NHL this time, Goligoski, 24, flourished. He handled a lot of ice time. He supplanted Kris Letang on the top power-play unit. He had six goals and 13 points in the first 15 games.

Then he tailed off. In his next 22 games after that strong start, he had eight assists.

He has been out of the lineup three times totaling 12 games because of undisclosed injuries but declined to cite that for a lack of offensive production.

"When you come back, you're good enough to play, obviously; I just haven't been able to find the back of the net," he said.

Now, it appears Goligoski is finding his balance and his offensive stride again.

"One of his strengths is his passing and getting up the ice, and he hasn't done that with as much regularity as we've seen be effective," coach Dan Bylsma said. "[Against Washington] he played a confident game and I thought he [showed] more of that."

Bylsma thought Goligoski had a pretty good weekend despite losses at Montreal and Washington, in part because he shot the puck from the point and moved across the offensive zone to create a shooting lane.

Although Goligoski takes a 32-game goal drought into Wednesday's home date against the New York Islanders, he has three assists in his past four games.

"I think Alex has the potential to be a great offensive defenseman in this league," said veteran Jay McKee, Goligoski's most frequent defense partner this season. "His defensive game has gotten better over the season. He pays attention to detail.

"He's a guy that wants to be great in both ends of the ice. These young players working their way into the league, it takes time. It takes making mistakes to learn from them."

With Goligoski, who is five games shy of 100 in the NHL, that process of taking two steps forward followed by 11/2 steps back seems to have manifested in a top-down way. His offensive prowess might have slipped because he was concentrating so much on playing strong defensively.

The catch-22 is that sound defense -- good position, good pressure -- leads to offensive opportunity for a defenseman with his skill.

"He's a unique skater, unique ability. He needs to use that both to defend and offensively," Bylsma said. "Sometimes if you're just worried about defending, you stop skating as much. He needs to make sure he's moving his feet, using that asset to defend, go back for pucks, and then get into the transition when it's there."

Goligoski is second on the team to Gonchar in points among defensemen with 26 and in ice time, averaging 21:59 a game.

While he's still fine-tuning his game, Goligoski seems anything but over his head.

"I'm pretty comfortable," he said. "There's not a lot of things that will surprise you after playing the equivalent of a full season."

NOTES -- The Penguins reassigned forward Mark Letestu to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League. ... The Penguins had the day off Monday.

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