The Pittsburgh Penguins still have a big hill to climb, even after lopsided win over the San Jose Sharks.

It may have been a softball opponent, but the Pittsburgh Penguins got an extremely important win to kick off a three-game California road trip.

The Penguins pummeled the San Jose Sharks by a score of 10-2 and that’s a promising trip back to the win column, but it’s just one and there is still a hill to climb.

“I don’t think we like where we are this early in the season,” Bryan Rust said following the win. “Don’t like our record, don’t like some of the results. So we knew we had to come out here tonight and try and get the win.”

Rust noted that despite the huge win, there is still plenty to learn from the game as a whole.

“You take every game for what it is,” Rust said. “You learn from the good, you learn from the bad. You take your lessons learned and move on. For us, it was good from a confidence standpoint.”

Heading into the contest, the Sharks were the last remaining winless team in the NHL, but the Penguins still had to dial in.

The Penguins themselves had their own struggles entering the night as the lowest ranked team in the Eastern Conference.

Jake Guentzel said the team knows where they are, and the desperation for wins went a long way in San Jose.

“We know where we are in the standings,” Guentzel said. “We needed to be desperate, we needed two points. Take some from this and get to the next game.”

The Penguins are already looking ahead to their next challenge and hopeful the win over the Sharks can be more than just a lopsided victory.

“I think we did a good job overall, but there are things we need to work on,” Reilly Smith said. “Just try to keep that positive momentum. Obviously, there's a lot of confidence that can be gained from scoring 10 goals.”

They may have scored 10 goals, but it only counts as one win; the Penguins still sit near the bottom of the Conference.

The Penguins have battles against the Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Kings left before coming home to Pittsburgh.

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