PITTSBURGH — Thomas Vanek was happier that his third-period goal against Pittsburgh gave the Buffalo Sabres the win than he was about it giving him the league lead.

Vanek's NHL-best 20th of the season completed a rally from two goals down and gave the Buffalo Sabres a 4-3 victory.

"I really don't think about my goal total too much," Vanek said. "It's not important. What's more important is that we got the win here and that we've got to keep winning."

The Sabres have won two in a row after snapping out of a stretch of losing eight of 10. Derek Roy, Ales Kotalik and Daniel Paille also scored for Buffalo.

Ruslan Fedotenko had two goals and Evgeni Malkin added two assists for Pittsburgh, which has lost consecutive games for the first time since Oct. 28-30.

"At 3-1, we started to play horribly," Penguins coach Michel Therrien said.

"It was a horrible performance. That's the truth."

Vanek's goal was a tap-in of a pass from Jason Pominville while he stood in the low left slot 6:13 into the third period. He is the first player to get to 20 goals this season — Philadelphia's Jeff Carter has 19 — doing so in his 27th game.

Vanek's goal capped the comeback from the 3-1 deficit, the second time in 11 days that Buffalo came from behind to beat the Penguins 4-3.

The Sabres had lost three in a row at Mellon Arena, and this one was won on the penalty kill. The Penguins were only 1-for-8 on the power play, and the one goal came during a 5-on-3.

"The power play is not good," Therrien said. "We are trying to be too cute."

The Penguins enjoyed 3:35 of two-man advantage time during the game over three stretches, including a full 2 minutes midway through the second that could have given them a 4-2 lead.

"They didn't put too many pucks on the net; they tried to be a little too cute and go for an empty net," Sabres defenseman Jaroslav Spacek. "They had a couple chances but we did a good job with some big kills, especially the second 5-on-3."

The lone power-play goal of the game was Kris Letang's first such in 82 games. Also his first goal of any type in 37 contests, Letang converted a setup by Sidney Crosby while in the slot, extending Crosby's point streak to seven games.

That gave the Penguins a 3-1 lead after Fedotenko scored twice during the first period off pretty feeds from league scoring leader Malkin and second assists by Petr Sykora. It was the first time Fedotenko had scored twice in a game since Feb. 14.

"We played really good in the first period, we got a lead, and we just couldn't hold on to it," Fedotenko said.

In between Fedotenko's sixth and seventh of the season, Roy tallied his eighth at 11:07.

Kotalik scored his seventh about 5 minutes after Letang's goal on a play that was set up by Maxim Afinogenov. After the Sabres had killed the 2-minute, two-man advantage, Paille tied the game with 5:11 to play in the second, his third of the season and first in 13 games, by slamming in a loose puck during a scrum in the slot.