PITTSBURGH — Finally playing at full strength, the Pittsburgh Penguins still needed to go past regulation to beat the pesky Florida Panthers.

Evgeni Malkin scored a power-play goal 37 seconds into overtime to give Pittsburgh a 3-2 victory over Florida on Saturday night.

The defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins — playing their first game this season with their entire lineup healthy — have beaten the Panthers by 3-2 scores in games that went to overtime during each of their three meetings this season.

"It's nice to have the whole group here back at it," captain Sidney Crosby said. "When guys come back sometimes it takes time, but we're a pretty familiar group of guys here."

Seven seconds after Florida's Jordan Leopold was whistled for holding, Sergei Gonchar set up Malkin for a one-timer from the high slot. It was the first goal in six games for Malkin, the reigning NHL scoring champion who also had an assist.

"I tried that shot a couple times (during) the game and every time it was blocked by a defenseman," Malkin said. "This time, during a 4-on-3, there's wasn't a defenseman (in the way), so I (had a lane to shoot)."

Pascal Dupuis and Ruslan Fedotenko also scored for Pittsburgh, 8-2-1 in its last 11 games.

Steven Reinprecht and Stephen Weiss scored for Florida. The Panthers have earned at least a point in five of their last seven, but have won only one of their past six.

Four of Florida's past six games have gone past regulation, and the Panthers are 1-0-3 in those games.

"It was good to get a point, obviously, but it's tough losing to them in overtime again," Reinprecht said.

Penguins first-line winger Chris Kunitz (lower-body injury) played for the first time in 14 games.

Nine regulars has missed time over the course of the team's 32 games, including five defensemen — and as many as six players at once were missing from the Penguins' projected lineup.

The Penguins entered the game with the second-worst power play in the league — and it showed through five mostly uneventful opportunities in regulation.

But Malkin's goal allowed them to improve to 7-1 in overtime this season (3-1 in games decided before the shootout).

"I hope it's what we needed," coach Dan Bylsma said of the power-play struggles. "We've had some good power plays but not scored... Sometimes the only thing we hadn't done was score a goal. Tonight, I think you saw us squeezing our sticks a little bit more on the power play, and sometimes you need a goal to release that. We were pretty happy to see that slap shot go in."