Pascal Dupuis has scored 100 goals in the NHL.

Few, if any, have been bigger than No. 100.

And none have been easier.

Dupuis shoveled the puck into an empty net at 1:24 of overtime to give the Penguins a 6-5 victory against Boston at Mellon Arena last night, snapping their four-game losing streak.

And while the Penguins obviously hit upon a winning formula, it's one they should not expect to replicate anytime soon.

It involved not only getting two goals from Dupuis, who labors most often on a checking line, but one each from a pair of defensive defensemen, Jay McKee and Mark Eaton.

Oh, and another by Bill Guerin, who didn't have any in the previous 11 games, with all of four-tenths of a second remaining in regulation.

"That was pretty tight to the wire," coach Dan Bylsma said.

Yeah, kinda.

The heroics of guys such as Dupuis, Guerin, McKee and Eaton almost overshadowed a strong comeback game by Evgeni Malkin, who had three assists in his return after a seven-game absence because of a strained shoulder.

"Obviously, it was a big boost for him to come back," Dupuis said.

Malkin's linemate, Sidney Crosby, had a pretty fair evening himself, scoring one goal and setting up two others.

"The combination of him and Sidney together is a tough combo to handle," Bylsma said.

The third member of the line, Ruslan Fedotenko, picked up two assists.

Dupuis' second goal gave the Penguins their fifth lead of the evening; they were unable to protect the previous four, and actually fell behind, 5-4, when Marc Sturm deflected in a Zdeno Chara shot at 17:31 of the third period.

"We knew there were still two minutes left, and that we'd been playing pretty well," Eaton said. "And we used it all."

All but four-tenths of a second of it, anyway.

That's what was left when Guerin put the game into overtime by taking a cross-ice feed from Malkin and beating Bruins goalie Tim Thomas from inside the right circle to tie the score, 5-5.

"I just wanted to put it on the net as quick and as hard as I could," Guerin said.

Considering how little time was left, that proved to be a pretty good plan.

"It was awfully nice to see Billy get the goal," McKee said.

The Penguins enjoyed watching Dupuis' winner, too. It was made possible when Thomas mishandled the puck behind his net, allowing Jordan Staal to get control of it and slide it in front to Dupuis, who had the hockey equivalent of an uncontested layup.

"I basically just tapped it in," Dupuis said. "That one was pretty easy."

That wasn't the case with the goals McKee and Eaton scored.

McKee made it 1-0 when he took a feed from Malkin, who was on his first shift of the game, and went hard to the net before backhanding a shot under the crossbar for his first in 85 games.

"He scored a beautiful goal, and I hit a post in the second," Eaton said. "I was like, 'Jay, imagine if we'd score in the same game.' And it ended up happening."

Indeed, Eaton got what could have been the deciding goal nine minutes into the third, as he got a pass from Crosby and buried a shot behind Thomas from inside the right circle to give the Penguins a 4-3 lead.

There were some things the Penguins would have liked to change about the game, of course, like their inability to hold a lead, and a 0-for-3 performance by their power play. Hard to quibble about the bottom line, though.

"We didn't play the game we wanted to play," Dupuis said. "But we got out of here with the win. That's the main thing. It doesn't matter how we got it."

Or, for that matter, whether they'll ever win another game in the same way.

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.