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It may be too little. It’s almost certainly too late. But for the first time since New Year’s Day, the Islanders have a win over a team currently in a playoff spot.
Powered by two points from Noah Dobson, including the game-winning goal, the Islanders returned home to UBS Arena and snapped out of their funk, beating the Bruins 4-1 on Thursday night.
At this point, with 16 points between them and the last wild-card playoff spot, any sounds of optimism emanating from the team will resemble obligation more than reality. But a win is a win, and after the season had reached another nadir with a loss in Buffalo on Tuesday, the Islanders, now 18-20-6, needed something — anything — that could be construed as a positive.
“I felt like it was a playoff game for us tonight,” Mat Barzal said.
Indeed, if the Islanders are going to pull off some kind of miracle, they’ll need to play like that every night. Starting in the second period on Thursday, they did.
“We started getting pucks back on the forecheck and that’s really when the game turned for us,” Dobson said. “We started competing hard.”
Facing a 1-0 deficit after a listless opening 20 minutes, the Islanders finally showed some offensive mettle. The Islanders got the puck in the Boston zone, got on the cycle and tested Linus Ullmark in net. And at 11:30 of the period, Jean-Gabriel Pageau broke through on the power play, cleaning up Dobson’s rebound after it spilled out into the crease.
Unlike most recent games, the Islanders managed to follow up a good 20 minutes with another good 20 minutes.
Dobson provided the go-ahead goal at 5:50 in the third with that most rare of bounces for these Islanders — a lucky one. His wrist shot from the right point made its way through traffic, bouncing off the post, off Ullmark’s back, then into the net. Through the Boston goaltender’s mask, you could sense a combination of frustration and befuddlement, the kind often found on the faces of the Islanders.
For once, they got the reverse.
At 13:32, Barzal added a much-needed insurance goal, putting home a rebound from Kieffer Bellows that gave the Islanders some breathing room after a few minutes of pressure from the Bruins had stretched them thin. An empty-netter from Brock Nelson with 1:13 to go made it 4-1.
“We’ve been in that position a couple times and haven’t done as well as we’d like,” Islanders coach Barry Trotz said. “It’s not gonna hurt our confidence, but I think it’s positive reinforcement to see the game that you have to play and we did that.”
It didn’t hurt that Ilya Sorokin turned in a sharp effort in net, making 26 saves after letting Taylor Hall’s wrist shot by at 17:26 of the first.
Consistency has been a buzzword of late with the Islanders, and one game doesn’t tell much of anything on that end. The recent road trip that ended with a 1-3 record, remember, began with a five-goal first period in a 6-3 win over Vancouver.
If the rest of the season is going to be anything other than a procession of the walking dead, though, it has to start somewhere.
The Islanders haven’t shown they can maintain a high level of play over a sustained period of games. But with the lowly Canadiens coming to town Sunday, this is as good a spot they’ll have for that to change.
“I think when you get a big win like tonight, hopefully we can build on it with our confidence and continue to build on it,” Dobson said.
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