It was a rare sight.

The Pittsburgh Penguins’ most upbeat and effervescent player was in a bad mood.

He was simply despondent.

Approximately 10 minutes after the Penguins suffered an ugly 4-2 come-from-ahead home loss to the New York Islanders on Feb. 20, rookie defenseman P.O Joseph was at his stall in the team’s dressing room ruminating over what went wrong.

As teammates around him fielded questions about a particularly unappetizing loss to a division opponent, Joseph sat there partially dressed in his equipment while staring vacantly at nothing in particular.

His mistake allowed the Islanders to tie the game they eventually won.

And he knew it.

“I just know I could have made a better play in the end, especially with the lead like that and the game (being) important like that,” Joseph said Friday in Cranberry. “It’s part of the game. You just try to learn from it and focus on the next game like I did. The faster you can just forget about it and just learn from it, I think, the better it is. Of course, it stuck around a little bit after the game. But I think it’s just me being (mad) about losing a game.”

With his team protecting a 2-1 lead midway through the third period, Joseph tried to play a puck from his own right circle off the glass and into the neutral zone. Islanders defenseman Hudson Fasching made an athletic leap in front of the Penguins’ bench to glove the puck and dropped it to the ice, allowing Islanders forward Bo Horvat to claim possession. Surging up the right wall, Horvat fired a bad-angle wrister that clunked off goaltender Tristan Jarry’s right arm and deflected into the cage for the tying goal at the 8-minute, 34-second mark.

Joseph’s despair over the faux pas was very evident to anyone who saw him after the game.

But it didn’t linger.

He reviewed video of his shifts following the game and then went back to work at practice the next day.

“Just watched the game by myself at night,” Joseph said. “Was able to see the area that I could improve. It’s a reset button really quick.”

Even though this is his third season, Joseph is still a rookie per the NHL’s guidelines for service time. The 2022-23 campaign is his first full season at the NHL level, and he is still learning to deal with the swings in confidence good and bad moments — such as his turnover against the Islanders — present.

“It’s definitely different (as an NHLer),” Joseph said. “There’s games every other day. The last couple of years (at the AHL or junior levels), you can think about it a couple of days straight. But here, it’s really how you can adjust during the next play or the (next) games. It’s important to be a good judge of yourself and see the times that you messed up and know the areas that you can improve. That’s a big part of being a professional athlete.”

Joseph’s approach in his first full NHL season has sated management.

“Confidence is such a big part of sports,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said. “When players are at their best, they’re confident. But they’re also human being, and confidence comes and goes. It’s fleeting. The good news is you can get it back as soon as you lose it. It starts with a nice play, and you can build. The more important thing is to not be overly critical of your own personal game, your individual game but to be observant of your own individual game.

“P.O responded really well. he’s been a very solid player for us all year long. We’ve just got to make sure that we don’t dwell on those things. We’ve just got to move by them.”

Joseph will make more mistakes before his rookie season is completed. And throughout the remainder of his career.

He knows he can’t let them erode his confidence.

“You have to trust yourself, you have to trust your teammates,” Joseph said. “You have confidence in all the people in the room to come up with a win. It starts with yourself. … It creates a good energy to be around someone that is confident in his abilities.”

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