The Penguins went into the weekend hoping to build on one of their best games of the season, string two more wins together and start climbing the standings.

Instead, they came to the practice rink Monday with prickly dispositions knowing they were nowhere near their best in their back-to-back losses and are running out of time to fulfill their preseason promise and pull back into playoff position.

“It’s definitely in here. Everybody in here knows that we have it, because there are definitely times when we show it,” Bryan Rust said with a scowl. “Why don’t we bring it all the time and why doesn’t it consistently happen? We don’t know. But we’ve got to find a way to do it, and we’ve got to find a way to do it fast.”

The Penguins, who have 33 games left, were seven points out of a playoff spot entering Monday. They do have games in hand on the teams they are chasing. But that won’t matter much unless they actually start winning more of them. The Penguins were victorious in just five of their 14 games since New Year’s Day.

Their inability to string together wins has prevented the Penguins from gaining ground in the Eastern Conference standings. This season, they have only two winning streaks of three games or more. The last one was in late December.

“We’ve struggled to find the same game consistently where we are hard to play against, we’re not giving up odd-man rushes, we’re creating offense in a smart way,” Ryan Graves said. “Things like that have plagued us a bit this year. It’s not one person. It’s not one line. As a team, we need to do a better job of that.”

The Penguins did those things in a 3-0 win against the Winnipeg Jets last week. But they were unable to keep it going Friday in Minnesota. They actually felt OK about the way they played in that one. Not so much in their loss in Winnipeg.

Sure, they were playing one of the NHL’s best teams during the second half of a back-to-back. But their sluggish start was inexcusable give where they sat in the standings. Tristan Jarry kept them in it but they left town with a 2-1 loss.

Two days later, some of the players were still stewing about that performance.

“I felt sick to my stomach after that. I kind of kept that feeling with me coming into today,” Lars Eller said. “We made so many bad decisions, giving up rushes, it could have been 5-1 easily. Jars kept us in the game. It was just disappointing. Just not good enough. So I hope we have a huge response on Wednesday.”

The Penguins will host the Florida Panthers that evening at PPG Paints Arena.

They could be short-handed in that game. Evgeni Malkin sat out another practice Monday with what coach Mike Sullivan described as a “maintenance day.” Kris Letang left the session early because he isn’t 100%. And Noel Acciari and now Jansen Harkins are out with concussions, putting their statuses in question.

The Penguins have so little salary cap room that they may need to put someone on long-term injured reserve to recall another player before Wednesday’s game or play a talented Panthers team without a full lineup of 12 healthy forwards.

“We’ve got a couple guys that are nicked up,” Sullivan said. “We’re going to see how we do here day to day and then I’m sure [Penguins president Kyle Dubas] will make the necessary decisions to give us the best roster to put on the ice.”

The players who were able to suit up for Monday’s practice were possibly more sore than normal when they headed home that afternoon. Sullivan put the Penguins through battle drills that encouraged contact in the corners and around the net. That is not something that has happened very often the last couple of years.

Eller said one thing the team discussed was “getting more engaged physically.”

“We did some drills to get guys engaged a little bit more because sometimes that’s where it starts. It’s on faceoffs. Loose puck battles. Winning rebounds,” Eller said. “Those are areas where we can improve. It takes a price to win.”

Graves echoed that, saying the Penguins have to dig deeper down the stretch.

“Obviously, we’re not happy with how the road trip went. That’s easy to see. But it’s how we react to it,” he said. “When you’re losing, a high level of compete is just something that you need to have. When things aren’t going your way, you have to work your way out of it. So that’s kind of where we’re at right now.”

The Penguins have fallen nine points behind the surprising Philadelphia Flyers in the race for third place in the Metropolitan Division and will be challenged to catch them. The Penguins are seven points out of the final wild card spot in the East and will need to leapfrog four teams to make the playoffs via that route.

So, the math is not in their favor as they look to play their way into a spot. Their margin of error has become razor thin, even with 40% of their season still left.

“We’ve got to find a way to grab some points, especially with less games and how tight it is,” Sidney Crosby said. “We’ve got to get ourselves in the picture here.”