This looked headed toward not just a loss, but perhaps an ugly one for the Islanders.
For 45 minutes, they played disconnected and disjointed hockey.
They could not possess the puck.
They recorded just 16 shots in two periods. They were down by just one, but it felt like a nadir — a moment where they could no longer stay positive about how they were playing.
So much for that.
Instead, the Islanders can walk out of Tuesday perfectly optimistic about the most important thing: the result.
They mounted a late comeback before Bo Horvat scored to beat the Penguins 4-3 in a shootout, cementing a resilient victory with half the Islanders blue line still missing and Isaiah George making his NHL debut.
“Sometimes, some nights, you win ugly ones,” coach Patrick Roy said. “And tonight might have been an ugly one. So good for us.”
Michael Bunting’s goal 7:44 into the third appeared to be the death knell for the evening, putting the Penguins up 3-1 after the Islanders had failed to mount a push at the start of the period and prompting “Fire Lou” chants from a small group of fans who had, evidently, seen enough.
But Drew O’Connor’s penalty for kneeing Noah Dobson less than two minutes later opened the door right back up for the Islanders, who promptly converted on the power play with Simon Holmstrom lifting in a backhand from down low to start the rally.
It was continued by Jean-Gabriel Pageau, who put in Anders Lee’s rebound at the 12:48 mark and let out a yell to go along with a double fist pump.
As far as morale goes, it might have been the most important goal of this early part of the season.
“I didn’t think I was playing my best game,” Pageau said. “I don’t think we all played our best game. [Ilya Sorokin] kept us in there. In the third, things started changing.”
That got the Islanders to overtime, where the teams traded off unsuccessful four-on-three chances.
And in the skills competition, Horvat beat Alex Nedeljkovic with a nasty start-stop move to score the only goal, with Sorokin stopping all three shooters for Pittsburgh.
“I think I’ve done it once in a shoot-out before,” Horvat said. “I think last [training] camp and it ended up working. This is the second time I’ve tried it and it worked again. Don’t know how many more times I got that in my bag.”
None of that is to sugarcoat how bad this looked for much of the evening.
That was not so much about the left side of the defense, which is down all three regular starters, or the top line, which is down Mat Barzal and Anthony Duclair.
It was about basics and fundamentals.
That was something new for a team which has, even through its losses, generally possessed the puck and gotten half-decent chances most nights, albeit while struggling to finish.
The Islanders struggled to complete passes and didn’t look to be reading from the same book while breaking the puck out, leading to long stretches hemmed into their own zone.
The 2-1 score after two periods was, in reality, beyond flattering for a team that was being out-chanced 21-10 through 40 minutes, per Natural Stat Trick — which Roy explained as mostly a function of an inexperienced defense.
That might be a little generous, given the forwards looked just as much out-of-sync.
But don’t blame the Islanders, who were in desperate need of two points, for not being too down on themselves over it.
“I don’t like to use [the term] must-win game, but there’s games in the season you want to win,” Roy said. “We lost our last two at home. I thought it was important to play a good game for our fans. It was an important game for us in the standings as well. We want to continue to go up.
“And if we could play some good hockey while we’re missing a lot of our guys, then that would be good for our confidence and for the experience of some of our guys.”
To Ottawa they go.