PITTSBURGH — Evgeni Malkin wasn’t exactly making a guarantee as much as he was trying to provide his sagging team with a needed dose of swagger.

Don’t let the messy last month fool you. The 2012 NHL MVP believes the fading Pittsburgh Penguins are headed to the postseason. Just like they have every spring since the Russian forward joined Sidney Crosby in turning the franchise around nearly nine years ago.

“I know we play playoffs,” Malkin said Thursday.

Even with an overextended defense missing injured star Kris Letang and veteran Christian Ehrhoff. Even with an ugly 3-9-2 stretch over the last month that has all the earmarks of an ugly collapse. Even with the surging Ottawa Senators growing ever larger in the rearview mirror.

Last Malkin checked, everybody starts the playoffs 0-0. What better way to wipe out the unsavory aftertaste of an uneven and sometimes bizarre season than packaging wins over the New York Islanders on Friday and Buffalo Sabres on Saturday to head into the playoffs on a high?

“I’ve played here a long time,” Malkin said. “It’s the first time (I’ve gone through this), but we need to work and just win the next two games.”

Maybe, but at this point winning one is hard enough. The Penguins have dropped four straight and missed a chance to ease any anxiety when they let a 3-0 lead evaporate in an overtime loss to the Senators on Tuesday night.

It marked the fourth time in the last two weeks Pittsburgh couldn’t clamp down after going up by at least two goals. Not the best way to make a case for the postseason.

“We’ve put ourselves in situations where the other team is able to dig their way back into games far too often,” defenseman Ben Lovejoy said. “We need to find a way to never let that happen again.”

Never might be asking a little too much. At this point, Lovejoy would settle for it not happening over the weekend.

“We feel we haven’t played our best hockey, that’s no secret,” Lovejoy said. “We’re comfortable we can come out and beat a team we’ve been battling with.”

One that has created its own sense of unease.

New York is 3-5-2 over its last 10 games, including a gut-punch 5-4 loss to Philadelphia on Tuesday that included a spirited rally from a three-goal deficit before losing on a knuckling 50-foot wrist shot.