PITTSBURGH — In the middle of chaos, the puck allowed Sidney Crosby a rare moment of clarity.

There it was, on his stick as the Pittsburgh Penguins star stood at the goal line on Monday night. In front of him, the New Jersey Devils were too busy tangling with Crosby’s teammates to notice the two-time MVP on the doorstep, giving him enough time to flip the rebound to his forehand before sending it past sprawled Devils goaltender Cory Schneider.

A split second later, the red light came on. The Penguins had a lead they would never relinquish and their captain moved a step closer to putting a prolonged slump firmly in his rearview mirror.

“It was kind of nice there to have some time and the puck lying there,” Crosby said. “Just tried to make sure I put it in.”

His 17th goal of the season capped a 5-1-2 surge into the All-Star break. Floundering in December, Pittsburgh heads to February with something resembling momentum, fueled in part by a leader who appears to be embracing new head coach Mike Sullivan’s team-wide challenge to his players to get their hands dirty.

Look at Crosby’s inelegant face-first dive to the ice after his ninth goal in his last seven games at Consol Energy Center as proof. For all his considerable talent, coaches have struggled to figure out how to best use him on the power play. On Monday there he was, down in the thick of things and ready to pounce when given the chance.

“He’s scored a fair amount of goals and a lot of them are in the hard areas, right around the blue paint where you have to take a cross check or you’ve got to get your nose over the puck and pay a price in order to score,” Sullivan said. “I think he’s a world-class player that has the skill sets to play in those areas and he plays he plays with courage.”

Crosby’s always been a grinder. His relentlessness and work ethic is one of the reasons he’s spent the majority of his first decade as the face of the NHL. It made the drastic drop-off in production at the beginning of the season all the more troubling. He had just six goals and 13 assists in the first 28 games, well off the career averages of a player who has led the league in points per game five times.

He wasn’t injured. He was just ... off. Though Crosby insisted he was fine with head coach Mike Johnston’s system, there were stretches — long stretches — where Crosby’s No. 87 would become invisible on the ice, a once unthinkable prospect. When Johnston was fired on Dec. 12, Crosby didn’t exactly offer a spirited defense of Johnston’s methods.