PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Penguins may be starting to find their stride.

Evgeni Malkin scored his fourth of the season on the power play, Jeff Zatkoff made 50 saves in his season debut and the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Buffalo Sabres 4-3 on Thursday night.

“We know we have the guys that can score, but you’re not going to win just on talent,” Penguins forward Pascal Dupuis said. “You have to grind games and win them the hard way. It’s what we’re learning to do early in the year.”

Dupuis, Patric Hornqvist and Ben Lovejoy all scored their first of the season and Malkin added an assist. Pittsburgh beat Washington on Wednesday night and has won three straight, six of its past seven and seven straight over Buffalo. Malkin has four goals and nine points in his last seven games.

Sidney Crosby had two assists, his first points in three games. Crosby is off to the worst start of his career and went without a point in eight of the team’s first nine games.

Dupuis’ goal was his first since last November after he missed most of 2014 with career-threatening blood clots.

“When you come back, you want to be an impact player and want to get back to your old ways,” Dupuis said. “It’s taking a while, but it’s slowly getting there.”

The same can be said for the Penguins’ power play. The unit is statistically the worst in the league despite a number of world-class players, including Crosby and Malkin. It scored its third of the season in 32 chances, breaking an 0-for-11 slump.

That helped support Zatkoff, who got the call after Marc-Andre Fleury started the first nine games for Pittsburgh. He turned aside 41 shots in the final two periods, including 23 in the third.

“We knew they were going to throw everything at us,” Zatkoff said.