Back on home ice, back out of their stupor and back to NHL-.500.
Saturday night is not going to change a big-picture outlook in which the Islanders have started the season far below their standard.
But they needed this 3-1 win over the Blues, to prove something to themselves as much as for any other reason after three straight gut-punch losses on the road, each one worse than the last.
To their credit, this victory did offer a reminder that the Islanders can still grind a game out, and even that they can, in fact, hold a lead.
“It’s huge,” Kyle Palmieri said after his empty-net goal sealed the affair in the final minute. “Obviously there’s no doubt in our mind that it was gonna get asked [about]. But I think as a group, you can’t look back at the last couple games. You gotta learn from it and at the end of the day, we’re giving ourselves opportunities to find ways to win hockey games.”
Closing games on a consistent enough basis to matter remains to be seen.
But if the Islanders are going to start building winning habits, it needs to start somewhere.
Step 1: Building on a lead, perhaps with a power-play goal.
Check.
That came courtesy of Brock Nelson, who took the demon of 1-0 leads blown in Calgary and Detroit and brushed it right off the Islanders’ shoulders late in the second period.
After Blues defenseman Ryan Suter went off for tripping, Nelson converted the team’s first power-play goal since the win over Vancouver eight days ago — and his first of the season — with a one-timer from his knees after Max Tsyplakov’s feed to the slot from behind the net.
What was a strenuous 1-0 became a lighter 2-0, with the Islanders feeling like they just might be able to carry over two periods’ worth of strong defense and forechecking into the third.
Ilya Sorokin, who earned his 100th victory, was on his game, too, recording a big-time stop on Nathan Walker late in the second to preserve the two-goal lead heading into the third.
Any notion that the Islanders would ride that feeling into a straightforward victory, though, was shattered less than a minute into the third.
Isaiah George took a cross-checking penalty 35 seconds in and 10 seconds after that, Jake Neighbours snapped one in from the left post to make it 2-1.
Noah Dobson appeared to give the Islanders a reprieve with 8:27 to go when he scored from the right circle, but that was quickly brought back for goaltender interference after a Blues challenge, with Palmieri visibly impeding Jordan Binnington.
Sorokin, asked for his reaction to that afterwards, mouthed a word beginning with ‘F.’
“No, please,” he said. “Not more again.”
On another night, it might have set the Islanders up for an even bigger punch to the gut.
On this one, they brushed it right off and kept going.
And at five-on-six, instead of completing the collapse, Palmieri added his second goal of the game into the empty net to seal up two very badly needed points.
“I thought that we did a good job making sure we don’t get rid of pucks and we protect those pucks and get out as a swarm,” coach Patrick Roy said. “The last five minutes, I thought we had phenomenal breakouts. We moved the puck, wow, giving us three-on-twos and you know what? Usually, that’s what happens when a team is pressing and they want to come back in a game and try to win.
“So if we do a good job in that area, we’re gonna have those chances because they have to open up. They have to pinch. They have to take chances. Today I thought in the last five minutes, we did a really nice job moving those pucks and moving it out. I was really happy the way we did it.”
If you’ve watched this team in the last week, or in the last year, you know how rare it is for their game to be praiseworthy when hanging onto any lead.
“Just go out there and play hard, be smart, don’t try to force anything,” Nelson said. “We know the structure and the game plan we want to try and execute.”
Saturday proved an exception to the rule.
Now the Islanders need to rewrite the rulebook.