It is the darned carrot dangling in front of them that is driving the Penguins a little bonkers.

Not so much the Stanley Cup, which they successfully chased down last season. That's a somewhat distant goal right now. They're seeking the more immediate gratification of stacking together games in which they play well and do that consistently.

"I think the frustrating thing for us is, it's not like we're searching to find what it looks like. We know what it looks like," center and captain Sidney Crosby said Saturday after the Penguins practiced at Mellon Arena.

Yet living up to that mental picture of the ideal 60-minute game has remained just out of reach quite a bit this season.

Most recently, the Penguins were strong in the first and third periods Friday against the New York Rangers, but gave up two goals in a lackluster second period and lost, 3-2, in overtime. Last Sunday, they held a 4-1 lead at Washington, only to lose, 5-4, in overtime because of a dropoff in the third period -- and the play of Capitals star Alex Ovechkin.

"You want to be consistent throughout the year, but being consistent from game to game is even bigger," center Jordan Staal said. "You don't want to have a good period in the first and then have a bad period in the second when they can get back into it.

"We haven't really been playing like we should for a long time. It really shows in our game. It gives other teams hope when they're playing us, and we don't want to play like that."

It hasn't crushed the Penguins in the standings. With 75 points in 61 game, they were ninth in the NHL, fourth in the Eastern Conference and second in the Atlantic Division before Saturday night's schedule.

But they feel the need to address some things quickly.

The team has what coach Dan Bylsma called "a response game" this afternoon at home against Nashville before the NHL goes on hiatus for two weeks for the Olympics. Then comes a stretch drive of 20 games before the playoffs.

Before practice Saturday, "we watched a lot of video, which was not a lot of fun, but it was probably something we needed," defenseman Brooks Orpik said.

Of even more use would be identifying why there are sometimes lulls in their game.

"Maybe you lose focus at certain points in the game," defenseman Alex Goligoski said. "It's tough to play a full 60 minutes [in top form] every night. Some nights things aren't going to go your way.

"But we definitely know we can play more consistently."

That's because they've done it before.

"That's what can be frustrating about it," Goligoski said. "We can dominate for periods of games and then kind of lose our focus or whatever it may be, start turning pucks over or things like that, get away from our game, and it's cost us some games.

"We know where we can be, and we've got to work at being there. It's working on things and being really good a lot of the time."

Orpik has a theory, and it has to do with the NHL schedule being condensed this season to accommodate the Olympics break, plus the fact that the Penguins have played four rounds in the postseason two consecutive years.

It's probably not what you think, though.

"A lot of it -- and I'm not blaming this on the media because you hear it from a lot of different outlets -- is I think guys keep hearing that, 'Oh, it's an Olympic year and you guys played in the Stanley Cup final the last two years, so you're supposed to be tired,' " Orpik said. "I think that gets in people's heads and you start thinking you're more tired than you are.

"I think when you do less, you actually get more tired. You get lazy-tired. You're not in a routine."

Nashville coach Barry Trotz, whose team practiced at Mellon Arena later Saturday, gives that some merit.

"It's a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy," he said, adding that the busier schedule is probably more taxing mentally than physically.

While all NHL teams have an extra game a lot of weeks this season, most don't have the high-skill level of the Penguins.

"That's why we can't [let ourselves] be outworked," Crosby said. "That's why I think we're all pretty confident in ourselves and in the result if we outwork the other team."

When they do that, the Penguins feel it.

"You can tell," Staal said. "Everyone's upbeat. It's a lot of fun to play. We're not there yet consistently.

"To know where we're at right now and where we can be, it's a little frustrating. But it's a good thing to know that we can get better, that we have better [to give] and, hopefully, we can get there sooner rather than later."

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.