An unfamiliar feeling enveloped UBS Arena as the Islanders exited the ice on Saturday with the bye week and All-Star break ahead of them. It just might have been optimism.
The Islanders haven’t had many reasons to feel good about themselves in January, but Saturday marked the first time since late December that they won back-to-back games, as they beat the Golden Knights, 2-1, when Mathew Barzal scored the overtime winner.
Following a run of 10 losses in 11 games spanning most of the month of January, it feels as though the worst might be behind the Islanders, who can now spend the next week resting and resetting for a run at the playoffs.
For most of the night, the Islanders played on their front feet, forcing Vegas netminder Logan Thompson to work and looking to be the team with more energy, even though both clubs were coming off games Friday. But all that energy only got the Islanders as far as a 1-1 tie after 40 minutes.
The Knights took the momentum from their equalizer late in the second period and carried it into the third, but goaltender Semyon Varlamov — who finished the game with 44 saves — came up big for the Islanders, who went into a defensive shell in the final minutes and played for the point.
Eventually, they got two as Varlamov stopped William Carrier’s penalty shot 28 seconds into overtime, and Barzal netted the winner in the final minute of the extra session.
Anders Lee put the Islanders on the board 3:52 into the second period, getting on a loose puck from Kyle Palmieri’s drive to the net, but that was the only payoff until overtime. Finishing — that all-too-familiar issue — failed the Islanders again.
William Carrier, who gave the Islanders issues all night on Vegas’ third line, knotted the score at 1-1 at 16:08 of the second, taking advantage of a defensive lapse when the Islanders left him all alone in front to snap home a feed from Chandler Stephenson behind the net.
That set up a third period in which the Islanders had no choice but to score. A night earlier against the Red Wings, they had scored in a third period for the first time in 11 games. With the back-to-back victories, though, came back-to-back goals after the end of the second period.
The road ahead is still long, and the Islanders need a lot to happen. Two wins don’t paper over the issues that plagued them all month, the injuries they’re still dealing with or the power play that still isn’t scoring.
But thanks in part to some luck, with the Penguins also struggling in January, the Islanders are just two points behind Pittsburgh, which has three games in hand, for the last wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. The Islanders will also need to get past the Sabres in the standings. Getting to triple-digit points might be out of the question, as the Islanders would need 45 points from their last 30 games to do so, but it’s possible that reaching 100 won’t be necessary to get into the tournament.
Just a few days ago, the Islanders were a group in desperate need of something positive. Now they’ve got it, and it is no small deal that they can go into the break feeling good about themselves.
That seemed just about impossible earlier in the week, when general manager Lou Lamoriello had to make a public show of confidence in coach Lane Lambert and the walls seemed to be closing in. Beating Detroit on Friday got the losing streak over with, but that would have meant little if they had followed it with the same kind of listless effort against Vegas that marked the run of poor play.
Instead, they exited into their break on a high note.