At least one team in Columbus didn’t have anything to celebrate on Monday.
In what amounted to a must-win game for the Islanders against a Blue Jackets team they are chasing in the wild-card race (that is, if one believes the Islanders are still in the wild-card race at all), they put together the kind of 60-minute effort that was missing earlier in this homestand to win 3-1 at UBS Arena.
This was the sort of effort which, if the Islanders could replicate it consistently, makes them look like a playoff contender.
Just like Saturday against the Sharks, the Isles hounded pucks and forechecked hard all night while their top six played up to their billing — in particular the Mathew Barzal-Bo Horvat combination, with Barzal twice feeding Horvat for goals.
There was also a strong effort on special teams, with the Isles scoring a power-play goal and getting a net-zero night on the penalty kill, with a shorthanded tally to make up for Columbus snapping the Isles’ scoreless streak on the PK.
The four-on-five effort was the linchpin of a tight defensive effort in front of Ilya Sorokin, who stopped 24 of 25 shots, with the Islanders rarely allowing anything inside.
The only downside on the night was a potential injury to Noah Dobson, who left the game early in the third period after taking a hit from Cole Sillinger and did not return.
Quietly, the Islanders have won five of their last seven games — it just hasn’t translated to making up ground in the standings, in part because the two losses have come against other teams ahead of them. Even after a four-point game against the Blue Jackets, they’re still seven points back of the second wild-card spot.
Still, it’s not really up for debate that the Islanders have played some of their best hockey of the season since the new year.
Case in point, the second period on Monday.
Down 1-0 on Kent Johnson’s power-play goal in the first, the Islanders bore down and got to work. Horvat’s line with Barzal and Anders Lee was dominant, scoring just 43 seconds into the period as Barzal fed Horvat from behind the net.
The duo would score a similar-looking goal on the power play 5:47 into the period, with Barzal circling around the offensive zone before picking out Horvat for another one-timer.
In between, the penalty kill took advantage after Zach Werenski tripped in the neutral zone, with Jean-Gabriel Pageau feeding Simon Holmstorm for a shorthanded goal.
That was one of three penalties the Islanders successfully killed in the second — and at five-on-five, they played up ice constantly.
For the second straight game, the Islanders had to hold onto a 3-1 lead in the last 20 minutes and they did so again without incident.
The third period — a running blooper reel for the first six weeks of the season — has become safe territory for the Islanders when holding a lead.
If they could make that improvement on the fly, then maybe there is hope that their strong couple weeks of special-teams play can be sustainable, too.
The Islanders’ position in the standings is such that if there’s any chance at all of making a run, they need to stack wins. One loss can hurt them as much as multiple wins help, especially against another Eastern team.
For that reason, the odds are stacked against them, even if the Islanders really have found something in their game recently.
But even at this juncture, getting into the playoffs is still the goal.