(My Sportsbook) - It's bad enough that the Penguins were swept in their recent home-and-home with the Montreal Canadiens, but what makes it worse is the fact that both games were there for the taking.

Mario Lemieux and Co. dropped both contests in overtime, falling each instance after battling back to knot the score. On Wednesday the Pens suffered a 3-2 defeat at the hands of the Habs, and their winless streak reached seven games (0-3-1-3).

Jan Hrdina scored twice in the losing cause as the Penguins also fell to 0-0-3-3 in overtime this season.

"It's tough," said Lemieux, who has 10 career OT winners during his Hall of Fame career. "We get a point, but it would be nice to win a game in overtime for a change."

Lemieux assisted on both goals, while Jean-Sebastien Aubin turned aside 32 shots. No. 66 increased his league-leading point total to 36, which is 12 ahead of Colorado's Joe Sakic, Florida's Olli Jokinen, Dallas' Mike Modano and teammate Alexei Kovalev on the leaderboard.

The Penguins opened Wednesday's scoring on Hrdina's power-play goal with 6:21 left in the first period. Lemieux's shot from the right circle was stopped, but the puck went straight in the air and Hrdina was able to whack it past Jeff Hackett, who started for Montreal in place of the injured Jose Theodore.

However, the Canadiens scored twice within a 38-second span of the second period to take a 2-1 lead before Hrdina managed the equalizer later in the frame.

Montreal's Andrei Markov then ended things 2:25 into the extra stanza. Doug Gilmour dished the puck to Markov just outside the blue line and the Russian defenseman charged into the zone. Markov skated to the top of the right circle, faked a pass and moved into the slot, where he whipped a wrister over Aubin's outstretched stick.

Penguins' coach Rick Kehoe once again tried to spark his struggling crew throughout the night by reshuffling his forward lines, but, for all intents and purposes, the tweaking failed.

"In a tight game like that, you're looking for someone to pop one in," Kehoe said. "And we tried to maybe jump-start a few other guys."

Pittsburgh's current swoon has dropped it into a third-place Atlantic Division tie with the New York Rangers.

UP NEXT

The Pens will visit Atlanta on Friday before hosting San Jose (Saturday) and Philadelphia (Wednesday).