PITTSBURGH — Mike Sullivan has been on the job for less than two weeks.

He stepped into a bad situation, and it hasn’t gotten much better since he arrived.

Fact is, it’s worse, at least on paper.

The Penguins lost four of their first five games after Sullivan replaced Mike Johnston as coach Dec. 12 and have drifted a full five points away from the Eastern Conference’s final playoff berth.

When they convene Saturday morning for a two-hour flight to the Twin Cities, where they will face Minnesota at Xcel Energy Center that night, the Penguins will find themselves marooned in 12th place in the Eastern Conference.

That means they must not only find a way to bridge that five-point gap separating them from Ottawa, which sits eighth in the conference, but to hurdle three other clubs in the process.

A daunting challenge, to be sure, and one the Penguins are not guaranteed to meet.

Especially if their offensive outburst in their most recent game, a 5-2 victory Monday against Columbus, continues to be an aberration. Through 33 games, the Penguins have scored an average of 2.27 goals, third-lowest figure in the league.

Nonetheless, the Penguins seem confident that Sullivan can - no, will - help them to salvage their season in the 49 games that remain.

“From the first time he opened his mouth in his first team meeting, he made an impact, he made an impression,” defenseman Ben Lovejoy said. “I can’t tell you how positive, yet demanding, he’s been, just in the short time he’s been here.

“It could be easy to be negative, with how things have gone, but he’s come in and he’s done it with motivation and discipline and attention to detail and staying positive with a group that maybe didn’t deserve it at all times.”

Sullivan’s impact was muted, to some degree, by the Penguins’ hectic schedule before the NHL’s holiday break, because he had only a handful of practices to introduce his personnel to the finer points of how they’re expected to play.

Lovejoy, though, characterized the few workouts Sullivan has run as “incredibly up-tempo” and productive.

“We’re working hard,” he said. “We’re working smart. He’s come in and really stressed details with the puck, and I think it’s starting to show.”

Forward Kevin Porter agreed that Sullivan’s philosophies are starting to translate to actions on the ice.

“We’re playing harder as a team,” he said. “We’re not turning as many pucks over as maybe the first couple of games.

“I felt like we were getting a lot of pucks deep. He’s been on that, getting pucks deep and pressuring their (defense) and playing in their end. I think it’s starting to rub off on us.”

The Penguins claimed the final Eastern playoff spot in April with 98 points. They have 35 at the moment, which means they would have to go 31-17-1, or its equivalent, the rest of the way to match their 2014-15 total.