RALEIGH, N.C. — The Pittsburgh Penguins work pretty fast these days — when they are turning a deficit into a lead, and when they are wrapping up a division.

Beau Bennett and Evgeni Malkin scored 13 seconds apart in the third period, and the Penguins clinched the Atlantic Division title by beating the free-falling Carolina Hurricanes 5-3 on Tuesday night.

Brenden Morrow scored his first goal with Pittsburgh, the first team in the NHL to claim a division crown in this shortened season.

“It’s been a priority for us to look at being tops in the division for the seeding in the playoffs,” coach Dan Bylsma said. “To be able to do that with eight games left in the season, I think that’s a pretty big accomplishment for this team.”

Robert Bortuzzo added a goal, and Pascal Dupuis had an empty-netter and two assists. Marc-Andre Fleury made 25 saves for the Penguins, the division winner for the first time since 2008.

They were without a handful of regulars — including captain Sidney Crosby, James Neal and Kris Letang — but still had plenty of timely firepower to hand Carolina its club-record eighth straight home loss.

“I just thought the response after the score was really good,” Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik said. “Sometimes when things aren’t going your way, you get a bit deflated. It wasn’t that way on the bench at all.”

Joe Corvo and Bobby Sanguinetti scored early goals for the Hurricanes, and Riley Nash put them up 3-2 exactly 2 minutes into the third.

“Any time you get the lead in the third, you want to clamp down and really do the little things right,” Nash said. “It just didn’t seem like we did that. It’s another learning experience.”

Bennett tied it with 10:11 left by slipping a backhand past Justin Peters, and Malkin scored with 9:58 left by poking the rebound of Jarome Iginla’s shot past Peters.

“I had a good-look shot. It was sitting there and with (Malkin’s) long reaching on the net, it was good to see him poke that one in,” Iginla said.